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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Let's say in a few years a corrupt politician manages to get himself elected president. For convenience, let's call him Dick Cheney. President Cheney expands the powers of the office, rewards his corporate friends who bought it for him and generally makes a mess of things. It doesn't look like he'll get a second term until there's another big terrorist attack. He makes his opponents look weak on security, further expands his power, starts three wars and gets re-elected easily. In his second term, he gets presidential term limits repealed, doubles the national debt and starts making journalists who ask too many questions "disappear".
People start to get fed up. They realize the terrorist threat is overblown. They realize President Cheney is more of a threat to the country than any outside entity. A challenger emerges. He persuasively argues for solutions all the experts agree are wonderful. He's well-spoken, good-looking, charismatic, entirely electable. He promises to restore civil liberties, release political prisoners and end intrusive surveillance. He's expected to win in a landslide. There's just one problem: he likes Thai ladyboys. Thanks to PRISM, Cheney knows, and ensures that a friend at Fox News finds irrefutable proof. Cheney wins a third term. The opposition candidate is later found with his throat slit outside a brothel in Bangkok.
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.
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.
Police corruption and abuse are real. Failures of the justice system are real. We must also acknowledge that the system often works correctly, even in high profile cases. As I write this, there is a real chance the former president will serve jail time after a fair trial. The police who murdered George Floyd are in jail, and serious reforms were enacted as a result of their misconduct. It is healthy to sniff for corruption. It isn't healthy to smell it before it is there.
The South Korean presidential scandal is one of the odder bits of contemporary political history. Imagine an alternate-history US President Hillary Clinton being impeached over PizzaGate and it starts to get close. Besides the actual corruption mentioned in the article, there are credible reports swirling of a "8 Goddesses" cabal and various occult practices.
That's not even entirely relevant. Others have pointed to the example of J. Edgar Hoover, which is highly relevant. Imagine not a figurehead, or an evil president, imagine merely an ambitious civil functionary who abuses and misuses his secret powers outside of any oversight.
The current president is at a minimum guilty of multiple cases of sexual assault. Rich people do not only not have to deal with it, they are next to untouchable.
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? "
I have been. It's been fascinating to watch so many members of the President's advisory circles go to prison. Campaign chair, deputy campaign chair, personal lawyer, national security adviser, political adviser, foreign policy adviser.
If I didn't know better, I'd guess the American people elected someone to "drain the swamp" who brought a swamp with him.
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!
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