OPINION:
Hitting someone is not nice, and in the hot house of a political campaign where sensibility if not sense thrives, pushing someone is a no-no. So is touching, which may be the greater crime. All should all strive for civility and good manners at all times, and that applies to officials of presidential campaigns. We’ve come a long way from the bad old days when Sally Quinn, the onetime doyenne of The Washington Post’s party reporters, boasted that she would tolerate a little flirtatious touching if that meant getting the story (and Sally was one of the best).
Earlier this week a Florida prosecutor charged Donald Trump’s campaign manager with misdemeanor battery for “grabbing” and pushing a reporter at a campaign event in the run-up to the Florida presidential primary. What makes this especially piquant, for connoisseurs of campaign trivia (who are particularly fond of anything that can be described in French) is that the prosecutor is a Democrat, and not just any old Democrat, but a leading member of Hillary Clinton’s Florida campaign team.
The Donald and his supporters regard the reaction to the incident, much of it manufactured outrage, as what the Bard would describe as much ado about not very much. Uninvited touching, in fact, is approximately what a Clinton aide did some time ago and nothing much was made about it. But the Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, is in most accounts of the incident just another Trump thug who would be fired by any other candidate.
Without commenting on the merits of who did what to whom, and why, since we were not there to see it, we nevertheless wonder that if the charge against Mr. Lewandowski is another manifestation of an increasing tendency of certain politicians to use the law to demonize their rivals.
The United States is meant to be a nation of laws not men, but those who control law enforcement have used the law to investigate, indict and prosecute those with whom they disagree. In Texas, an out-of-control prosecutor, a Democrat, indicted Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a senator; Tom DeLay, the House Republican majority leader, and Rick Perry, the governor, all Republicans, on flimsy and hardly imaginative charges, which the courts promptly threw out, as the prosecutor knew they would. In Wisconsin, Democratic prosecutors conducted midnight raids on the homes of Republican friends of Gov. Scott Walker. The courts threw those charges out, too.
Now U.S. Attorney Gen. Loretta Lynch vows, together with Democratic attorneys general around the country, to use the law to silence critics of global warming, or climate change, since persuasion has not worked. This is a hardly “progressive” and certainly not “liberal,” as the words were once used, but effective in tainting reputations of the innocent.
Mr. Lewandowski will soon appear in court to answer for his suspect manners and may even be fined for having “touched” the reporter, who in the old days would have complained to her editor, and been told to sit down and write the story and keep herself out of it. She could tell her story to admiring colleagues at the bar down the street. The Lewandowski story, too, shall pass, having generated a ton of talk and the expenditure of several hundred gallons of ink, which was exactly what the Florida prosecutor wanted. We hope the campaign manager will learn to mind his manners, and we send best wishes to the reporter who could have touched back with a sharp touch across the face. No further therapy needed.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.