By DAVID FRENCH
Caitlyn
MacGregor dons a “pussyhat” and attends the second annual Women’s March in
Cambridge, Mass., January 20, 2018.(Brian
Snyder/Reuters)
The steady drumbeat of sexual scandal is eroding the
Left’s moral authority.
In 2016, the Democrats made a significant mistake in
opposing Donald Trump:
They framed their opposition to Trump in moral terms,
but failed to provide a better alternative. In 2017 and 2018, they’re making
the same mistake again, adopting an attitude of moral superiority in spite of
obvious evidence to the contrary.
The Left’s failure in the presidential election was
glaringly obvious.
You claim Trump is dishonest? So is Hillary Clinton.
You
claim that Trump’s financial dealings are shady? Let’s walk through Whitewater,
cattle futures, and the Clinton Foundation.
Trump is a predator? Voters who
lived through the 1990s remember “bimbo eruptions,” Monica Lewinsky, a rape
allegation, and a wife who consistently covered for her husband’s horrible
behavior. The Clintons were a package deal, and that deal included a legacy of
tawdry, shocking sexual scandal.
Hillary centered her entire campaign on the notion that
Trump was a bad person. She was the worst candidate to make that argument.
But
when 2016 entered history, so did she.
Her book tours and headline-grabbing
gaffes notwithstanding, she’s largely yesterday’s news.
The #Resistance, on the
other hand, is fresh. And it has the moral authority that Hillary lacked. It
can speak clearly about “norms” and “values.” It can condemn Trump’s multiple
moral failings in the strongest possible terms, unencumbered by all that
Clinton baggage.
At least until #MeToo.
I truly don’t think the Left understands how the
relentless drumbeat of sexual scandal looks to Americans outside the
progressive bubble.
Left-dominated quarters of American life — Hollywood, the
media, progressive politics — have been revealed to be havens for the worst
sort of ghouls, and each scandal seems to be accompanied by two words that
deepen American cynicism and make legions of conservative Americans roll their
eyes at the Left’s moral arguments: “Everyone knew.”
Let’s put this in the clearest possible terms:
For years,
as Hollywood positioned itself as America’s conscience and as the media lauded
its commitment to “social justice,” it was harboring, protecting, and
indeed promoting truly dreadful human beings as leaders and
taste-makers. Progressive politicians who proclaimed support for women’s rights
on Twitter were groping women on airplanes or punching them in the bedroom.
All this was happening at the precise time that the
dominant argument — particularly against social conservatism — was that “you
people are haters and bigots.”
It’s difficult to overstate the extent to which
conservative Americans have felt scolded and hectored.
So how do you expect us
to react when it’s revealed that all too many of the self-appointed moralists
weren’t just the kind of preachers who’d run off with the secretary, they were
the kind of monsters who’d press a button in their office, lock the secretary
in the room, and assault her?
And again, people knew.
Progressives might immediately respond, “Well, at least
we’re cleaning house.”
And it’s true that the number of politicians and
celebrities who’ve resigned or been fired is growing long indeed.
But
conservatives have their own retort: “We are too.” Bill O’Reilly is off Fox.
Roger Ailes was forced out before he passed away. Roy Moore lost an unlosable
Senate seat. Missouri’s governor may well face impeachment.
That leaves, of course, the presidency, which puts us
right back where we started, with the terrible dilemma of 2016.
Do Democrats
honestly believe that they can put forth a corrupt candidate and then, when
that candidate loses, adopt a morally scolding position that Republicans should
demand the discipline or resignation of their victor?
If they do, they’re in
for a rude awakening:
Most living voters remember all too well how they circled
the wagons in 1998 around a man who was credibly accused of rape — not just
defending him, but trying to reorder American sexual morality and destroy his
accusers and investigators in the process.
There are very good reasons why there is collapsing trust
in American public institutions, and #MeToo has only hastened that collapse.
Make no mistake, it’s a welcome reckoning.
But it’s also dismantling
progressive moral credibility.
It’s revealing a deep rot and entrenched
corruption.
And it’s leaving Americans with a profound, unanswered question:
You say the Trump GOP is morally bad, but where is your morally superior
alternative?
Moral arguments are always perilous to make.
They
invariably put a spotlight on the person and the movement making them.
They
carry with them an implicit requirement to be better.
Hillary
Clinton could never manage that burden.
Now the #Resistance is saddled with the
collapsing credibility of major progressive cultural institutions.
The housecleaning is welcome and long overdue.
Victims
have been crying out for justice for far too long.
But justice has a way of
revealing truth, and for the Left that truth is hard to face:
In the battle for
American hearts, it has lost the standing to make its moral case.
DAVID FRENCH —
David French is a senior writer for National
Review, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, and a veteran
of Operation Iraqi Freedom. @davidafrench
