In the abstract, David Brooks’s choice to begin today’s Times column about the assorted Trump/Russia investigations with the following isn’t necessarily a bad one.
I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas.
Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport.
In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown.
The choice I object to is the choice not to begin the next sentence with, “For this reason, I resign my post, effective immediately, and resolve myself to a life of solitude in the desert.”
Hey Dave! Eat shit!
[NYT]