While it would be great to actually charge former US presidents for what they've done (Bush and Obama war crimes anyone?), politically motivated selective prosecutions are extremely corrosive. And that's what campaign finance charges (not specifically Trump ones) look like to this non-American.
Honestly, what the US campaign financing system needs is a full overhaul, its full of legal and illegal-but-ignored corruption.
Maybe we should just decide that all presidents go to prison after their term, automatically. If you aren't willing to do that, I guess you don't really want to be president badly enough.
Joking aside (I think I'm joking)... what else would "getting on that train" even look like?
I'm also not sure if what you said was an alternative to what I said. I said it may point out that South Koreas presidency is routinely corrupt, and you said "alternatively, what if they just realize all presidents are corrupt" -- that doesn't seem an alternative, those seem consistent!
he said "former president" and you are saying "president". not the same thing.
the important difference is that the president has a lot of power while in office, pardon power, and many immunities. If a president is "corrupt", their power is great, their prosecution will be very difficult, but there is a reason to want to stop them.
A former president has lost those powers and immunities, and in the same sense is also "no longer a threat", so in most cases it's not "necessary" to take legal steps to stop them from further crimes or transgressions.
And in both cases, the due to the nature of politics, there is a desire to avoid feeding the political hunger for revenge thru malicious prosecution. Both sides have found it in their interest to let the wounded political warriors retire from the field, and focus the fight to those remaining.
It has never happened before now. It isn't because past presidents have never been criminals, it was convention. It's a way for your country not to turn into Haiti or Zimbabwe.
It's rather off-putting to have a corrupt, amoral president who uses transparency as a weapon against his political opponents, lies, and doesn't show respect for civil servants.
On the other hand, normalizing corruption like has been done since the Iran-Contra affair, where people faced no consequences and were pardoned, is the reason why you end up with blatant corrupt administrations like we have today.
If Nixon or Cheney had served jail time, there would probably be more push back against Trump's actions.
Responsibility has to be pretty defuse, right? You can at least begin with all the presidents in office since he was prosecuted, until N-1 since presumably the Nth just released him.
I'm voting this up even though I think it's a horrendous idea. Here's why:
The problem isn't that there wasn't a crime: it certainly looks like there was. I am outraged by parts of what I've read. The problem was that the system sought to legally justify it. The problem is that we changed the system so that a good portion of people believe there was no crime. If somebody is told by the system that there is no crime, we can't then go backwards in time and declare there was one. History shows us that such legal application is always more destructive to society than the original incident.
An important concept to understand is "criminalizing politics". That's when politicians, who rotate through office and are expected to spend most of their lives as private citizens, make decisions that could be criminal but do not involve personal gain.
We elect people to make hard choices that involve results that could be construed in other contexts as criminal, especially with respect to foreign policy. We always have.
I do not like any of this, but it's very important to understand that the problems here are systemic. A different president and VP were just as likely to make the same choices. Want to go back and try people for Japanese interment? All the rendition done prior to 2000? Assassinations and coups overseas? Spying on MLK? Such an emotional attitude is understandable, but you just can't continue a government like that. If the system was acting as best as it could, and it screws up? You fix it. You don't get the firing squads out. That's banana republic territory.
So let's fix the system so it doesn't happen again. If we want somebody to hang, start a nice show trial. But since folks were acting in good faith (which is more important than "just doing their jobs"), pardon them and let's move on. There is no justice to be had here. We need to learn. This is not the time to let emotional outrage lead us into hurting each other needlessly.
Look-- prosecution and liability of people holding office is tricky.
We neither want a world where every politician faces investigation for misdeeds after leaving office, nor one where apparently the president can act with impunity with no clear limits at all.
We need a middle path, where prosecution is rare and exceptional but true misdeeds can be punished (and deterred).
I feel like we left behind where we were slightly over-investigating and made a massive overcorrection to the other side for blatantly political reasons.
Can you point to an instance of a non liberal democratic top leader being removed from power on account of their crimes within the established legal framework
Worse, if the money is dirty, it might give prosecutors a reason to start investigating your campaign. Many federal prosecutors are more than eager to make their name in the Justice Department by taking down a prominent public figure.
I agree with that. If we hand-wave away all cases, then we never tamp them down. Corruption would continue to grow.
So, we should call out all cases. Even if there are so many cases to cause one to become tired of the fight.
Maybe I was just reacting that in todays world the lines have blurred enough that it is sometimes hard to tell if you are fighting corruption, or if you have become the corruption.
From different points of view both these are correct:
"The US experienced a Coup attempt by a president that then did not suffer any consequences for his un-constitutional actions"
or
"The President, fighting for the American Way against the corrupt deep state government attempted to bypass a fake election to continue his quest to root out evil? "
This also happened before he was a sitting president, so all the stuff about “Bush Iraq war crimes” and “Nixon’s burglary” and similar historical presidential baggage is mostly irrelevant, at least in terms of new precedent.
The social/civil consequences of this sort of criminal indictment before election is enough to kill a presidential campaign and has enough times in history. As it should be.
This is behaviour before/after presidency when the stakes are far lower.
The actual story is the election of a monstrous moron to a post where his actions can materially negatively effect the future survival of civilization as we know it.
His reelection would be likely to be the end of democracy as we know it as he corrupts the entire apparatus of government on which undoing the damage he has done depends.
Unable to win fairly we have seen unprecedented voter suppression and an entirely expected smear campaign.
Faced with a situation where this smear campaign endangers our nation and its people fighting it isn't scandalous it is noble.
reply