Don’t pop corks just yet

Let us continue the theme in this space of advocating practicality in politics and despairing of pandering to base supporters. And let us make clear that we are not equating the depth of transgression.

Republicans appeal to their base by defending insurrection. That exceeds in offensiveness that Democrats appeal to their base by over-exciting progressives with doomed spending proposals and the appearance of politicization of Donald Trump’s criminality.

Republicans betray the American democratic system. Democrats are only tactically inept.

Now we find ourselves near the intersection of that Republican betrayal and Democratic ineptitude. These are the questions: Should the special House committee investigating Jan. 6, 2021, merely report facts and state the conclusion that Trump committed crimes—obstructing government and perpetrating fraud on the American people? Or should it take further affirmative and formal action by forwarding to the Justice Department a recommendation for criminal charges?

I know the answer, grasping its self-evidence. I wonder only about the clear-sightedness of Democrats who’d try to pass a modern New Deal without the votes and who twice impeached Trump merely to produce headlines exclaiming his acquittal.

The answer is that a criminal referral from a congressional committee made up of Democrats and two anti-Trump Republicans is an optional symbolic act that would serve in its powerful symbolism mostly to taint by politicization the essential work of the Justice Department.

A congressional finding of criminality against a former president is plenty enough.

A formal referral would amount to nothing more than a joyous rush for the most emotionally partisan Democrats, just as Tom Cotton accomplished nothing more than a joyous rush for the most emotionally partisan Republicans when he said Democrats wanted to make everyone poor by stranding them in cities with only scooters for transportation.

Tactical soundness and practicality are served every day that Attorney General Merrick Garland nobly proceeds mutely with caution, deliberation and maybe even agony in the Jan. 6 insurrection investigation. They’re served every day that overwrought progressive Democrats take to social media to blast Garland as a gutless wonder for not making them excited.

A criminal charge should never be filed out of political interest or from political pressure. It should never be filed excitedly. It never should be bandied about before filing. And that goes for everybody.

But that principle necessarily applies even more in a cancerously divided political culture when the prospective criminal defendant is a former president of the United States.

You don’t charge him for headlines. You don’t charge him for talking points. You don’t charge him for applause lines at your political convention. You don’t charge him from congressionally collected information. You charge him only reluctantly, even with agony, only from independent criminal investigation, and only because the law and righteousness compel it in a clearly demonstrated way.

Trump tried despicably to use his Justice Department to serve his interests of ego, politics and law. His attorneys general, both of them, were too obliging of him. But, in the end, they were unwilling to be full prostitutes.

A Democratic congressional committee formally asking a Democratic attorney general to file criminal charges against that aforementioned offender, based on findings of fact, would not be as egregious as Trump’s heavy-handedness with his attorneys general. But being not as bad as Trump is the lowest imaginable bar of propriety.

The best celebration for Democrats would be of Trump’s not getting back into the presidency. Popping corks that Democratic politicians just called on Garland to file criminal charges against Trump would be insulting to good bubbly.

Politics by partisan excitement is as pointless as sports fans in the stands shouting obscenities at the officials or tearing down the goalposts in exultation over a halftime advantage, which would render the remaining game unplayable by the rules.