“[The] process of election affords a moral certainty that the office of President will seldom fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. … [I]t will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States. [Emphasis Added]”
- Alexander Hamilton, under the pseudonym, “Publius”; Federalist No. 68
Put aside the ten percent of our (or any nation’s) population who are either crazy or will, tacitly if not explicitly, acknowledge that they are governed by the base instincts to which former President Donald Trump appeals. Everyone that reads these pages is old enough to remember that before Mr. Trump rode down his escalator – less than ten years ago – it was unthinkable – unthinkable! – that a convicted felon would remain a serious candidate for any high federal office. Given Mr. Trump’s conviction yesterday on all 34 felony counts brought against him by the New York City Manhattan District Attorney, and notwithstanding the incessant attempt to delegitimize the verdict that has commenced in the alt-right propaganda silo and will continue through Election Day, it is now up to us as Americans – primarily up to the approximately 35% of our citizens, neither crazy nor consciously willing to succumb to their baser impulses, who up to now have indicated a willingness to vote for the former president this November — to decide:
Do I believe in our judicial system, that any outcome arising from the orderly administration of justice is paramount to any respective substantive policy preferences I may have, and its result should be heeded and respected?
Do I believe that my fellow American citizens – although they may reside in a very different environment from mine, and have markedly different perspectives on most issues facing our nation than I do – are capable of understanding their solemn responsibility, soberly weighing the evidence placed before them, and rendering an impartial verdict in a criminal trial?
For those of us who have family and friends who support Mr. Trump and hereafter question the impartiality of the New York City jury in our presence, I offer this as a possible response (an obvious trap, but I would submit nonetheless an above-the-belt way to make an important point): “If Joe Biden was being criminally tried in [your home town], and you were on the jury, would you be able to put aside your dislike of him and impartially look at the evidence?” If predictably your relative or friend replies in the affirmative — and I believe that the vast majority of our citizens of all political stripes would indeed take their duty seriously — the conclusion is easy: “If you think you could, why don’t you think those New Yorkers did?”
Whether a convicted felon wins the presidency of the United States this fall will say more about us as a people than it will about Mr. Trump. It is we, not Mr. Trump, who will determine whether, in President Abraham Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg, our “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
McCoy's Noise 