Once upon a time, I used to read George Will regularly. He was erudite, he was principled, he was equally critical of both political parties, and he was a reliable champion of ethical values. I don’t know if it was Donald Trump who broke him, but Will’s intellect and integrity certainly didn’t survive Trump’s rise. If nothing else, Will is an elitist, and the prospect of an unmannerly low-class boor entering the White House was too much for George’s aging brain to bear. He snapped, and suddenly the slave of cognitive dissonance, he decided that if a man like Trump was allied to the democratic and political principles he had spent his professional life passionately advocating and defending, then he shouldn’t defend them any more.
Snobbery over substance. Good plan, George!
Since his decline into irrelevance or senility I haven’t wasted a moment on Will’s writings; I don’t care what he thinks, because he no longer thinks clearly. His latest in the Washington Post, however, is special. Risibly titled “Amend the Constitution to bar senators from the presidency,” it checks all the boxes of a truly bad, indeed unethical, op-ed.
Will’s simple-minded argument is…
Banning senators from the presidency would increase the probability of having senators who are interested in being senators, and would increase the probability of avoiding:
Presidents who have never run anything larger than a Senate office. Who have confused striking poses — in the Capitol, on Twitter — with governing…
Oh I see now: George isn’t really advocating banning Senators from being President. He’s just cranky that Senators aren’t doing a better job, and deceiving his readers into believing there’s any solution other than electing better Senators. Of course, Will has never been willing to dirty himself with actual policy making or trying to build public consensus; it’s so much easier to stand on the sidelines and call everyone else idiots.