One major cause of institutional decline involves politicians putting their own immediate interests ahead of their obligations to democratic norms. We wake up one day and discover that a long series of individual choices has rotted out the constraints on authoritarian rule.
President Trump plainly feels no sense of stewardship when it comes to our political system or to any accepted standards of truth. From the moment he descended that escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, he made clear that he would say and do anything to advance his purposes and to eviscerate anyone who opposed him.
It should thus not surprise us that in anticipation of Robert Mueller’s actions this week, Trump rolled out an assault on the legitimacy of the special counsel’s investigation and brazenly insisted that not he but Hillary Clinton (the holder of no public office) should be the subject of prosecutorial interest.