If the matter culminates in an indictment and trial of Mr. Trump, the Republican argument would be more of what we heard day in and day out through his administration. His defenders would claim that every person ostensibly committed to the dispassionate upholding of the rule of law is in fact motivated by rank partisanship and a drive to self-aggrandizement. This would be directed at the attorney general, the F.B.I., the Justice Department and other branches of the so-called deep state. The spectacle would be corrosive, in effect convincing most Republican voters that appeals to the rule of law are invariably a sham.
But the nightmare wouldn’t stop there. What if Mr. Trump declares another run for the presidency just as he’s indicted and treats the trial as a circus illustrating the power of the Washington swamp and the need to put Republicans back in charge to drain it? It would be a risible claim, but potentially a politically effective one. And he might well continue this campaign even if convicted, possibly running for president from a jail cell. It would be Mr. Trump versus the System. He would be reviving an old American archetype: the folk-hero outlaw who takes on and seeks to take down the powerful in the name of the people.
We wouldn’t even avoid potentially calamitous consequences if Mr. Trump somehow ended up barred from running or his party opted for another candidate to be its nominee in 2024 — say, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. How long do you think it would take for a freshly inaugurated President DeSantis to pardon a convicted and jailed Donald Trump? Hours? Minutes? And that move would probably be combined with a promise to investigate and indict Joe Biden for the various “crimes” he allegedly committed in office.
Dear me. If we uphold the rule of law, the lawless won't like it. Linker seems to believe that if the Democrats don't indict the egregious criminality of Republicans that Republicans will refrain from using the law as a weapon against Democrats. Really?
Here's the problem with moderates like Linker, Brooks, et al. They think they're smarter than Democrats because they are not driven by partisan passions, which they assume is all that's driving Democrats. They think of themselves as understanding the situation better because, as moderates, they are by definition more rational and sensible, that they have a clearer view of what's happening in a way that impassioned Trump haters do not. They see the big picture, but really they don't. They have no real understanding about how their reasonableness leads to a kind of misreading of the situation.
They are like the moderates in 1850s who thought that the more sensible Southerners would prevail and so they needed to keep compromising with Southern demands. Fugitive Slave Act? Sure, if it makes Southerners happy. But it never makes them happy because fanaticism is never satisfied with compromise. Perhaps because people like Linker are so moderate and rational they are incapable of understanding how fanaticism works. With the GOP now, as there were in the South in the 1850s, there are still some non-fanatics, but they have no influence. None. There is no possibility of compromise if there are no sane actors to compromise with.
Moderates think that to indict Trump is to pour gasoline on the fire, but the fire has already broken loose in the forest; it's burning out of control and moving toward the cities. One of the chief symptoms of this out-of-control fire is its toleration of egregious criminality. And as there is no compromising with a raging forest fire, so there is no compromising with the fanaticism of the GOP; It can only be suppressed or contained.
The Democrats, for all their limitations, are cast in the role of firefighters, whether they want the job or not. And only they have the tools to suppress and contain the fire--suppress by defeating Republicans in the next two election cycles, and contain by insisting on the rule of law. For the firefighters to give up the rule of law is for them to surrender one of their most important tools to contain the spread of the fire. Linker seems to think that if you refuse to contain the fire, it will just go out on its own. Clearly that's not going to happen. Appeasing fanaticism looks weak and feckless because it is. It's a failure of nerve.
The Democrats must persuade non-fanatic Americans that they must use both tools to fight fanaticism--elections and the rule of law. Remember, Republicans are only 23% of the electorate, so the fight here is to persuade Independents that Republican fanaticism is the most important threat to their liberties, and that the rule of law is really what's at stake here. Better to make the case for the rule of law by using the rule of law, than to appear feckless in appeasing fanaticism.
Yes, it might be too late--the fire might already be uncontainable. But it might not be, so Democrats have to use every tool they have as effectively as they can use them. And I can guarantee that if the firefighters unilaterally disarm by refusing to enforce the rule of law, the game is lost and the negative consequences that Linker predicts will ensue anyway. Does he really believe that if the Democrats are lenient with Republicans that the Republicans will be lenient with Democrats?
Of course they won't be because to think so assumes that they are sane actors when they are not; they are fanatics. And so that's why Republicans must be kept out of power. But even if Republicans regain power, we have reason to hope that, at least in the short run, the GOP's use of the courts as a political weapon against Democrats will be as effective as their use of the courts to assert Trump's claims about election fraud. The Democrats must use the courts while they still respect the rule of law, or in the long run the courts will become precisely the political weapons that the fanatics already, wrongly, believe they are.
Update: All the above being said, I agree with Douthat--
It seems like a reasonable presumption that the documents in question are more serious than just some notes to Kim Jong-un but that the potential incrimination falls short of Trump literally selling secrets. But that’s a presumption, not a prediction. I’ve learned to be unsurprised by Trump’s folly and venality but also by his capacity to induce self-defeating blunders among people and institutions I would have considered relatively sensible before his ascent.
So no predictions, just the warning: Don’t miss.