It was President Bill Clinton who often spoke ruefully about what he called “the politics of personal destruction.” He argued that he was on the receiving end of it during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Clinton’s moral lapses were real, and their widespread revelation cost him his law license and permanently damaged his reputation.
But compared to today’s vicious politics, Clinton’s travails were child’s play. Since Clinton’s time, the underlying political tactic of personal destruction has been honed to a fine edge. It’s dirt simple: render your political opponent unelectable. That way, the upcoming election won’t be decided based on political or policy preferences; it will simply be a contest of good vs. evil, and good always trumps (pardon the pun) evil.
For a case study of the politics of personal destruction, look no further than the rise, the fall, and the political resurrection of Donald John Trump.
In 2016, the Democrats underestimated the political threat posed by a pompous rich guy contending against their shoe-in presidential candidate, the glass-ceiling breaker, Hillary Clinton. Following Trump’s improbable win, they dedicated four years to making sure it would never happen again. They invested two-plus years in pursuit of the Russia collusion allegation — when that sputtered, they impeached him anyway.
The Democrats’ Trump vendetta continued even after they managed to drag Joe Biden over the 2020 finish line. They impeached Trump a second time, accusing him of inciting insurrection on January 6, 2021, an episode described by new President Biden as “the greatest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.” They staged a made-for-TV congressional inquiry, and they hunted, arrested, and prosecuted more than a thousand J6 participants.
But still squeamish about the possibility that Trump might find a way to wheedle his way back into power, they pulled out all the stops with full-on personal attacks, unlike any ever seen in this nation, engaging criminal and civil courts in actions against the former president and 2024 presidential candidate.
- Raid by armed FBI agents on the former president’s private residence to find and retrieve classified documents believed to be in his possession. Follow-on 40 criminal charges against him (later dismissed).
- Civil trial for sexual assault alleged to have occurred 30 years previously but never before reported; net findings for the plaintiff of more than $80 million.
- Arrests and prosecution of multiple close associates of the president — several have served jail time, and other cases are pending.
- Several states attempted to disqualify Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate and remove his name from their ballots (later reversed by a Supreme Court ruling).
- Indicted for overstating the value of his assets in financial documents — a victimless “crime” (the lenders and insurers involved expressed no concern with the Trump figures), but the judge unilaterally decided on a penalty of nearly half a billion dollars (a finding just reversed this year).
- Criminal trial for alleged falsification of campaign finance records by the Trump campaign in 2020, normally a misdemeanor offense and seemingly in compliance with campaign finance record-keeping rules, but elevated by the NYC court to felony status. The trial produced 34 felony convictions — essentially a single inconsequential bookkeeping error (if that) repeated 34 times — but a license to forever call Trump a “convicted felon.”
- Full glossary of Hitler terms (Nazi, Gestapo, fascist, dictator, authoritarian, etc.) injected into the Democrat vernacular, used constantly, in every context by political opponents.
My belief then and now is that the above lawfare barrage was never intended to keep Trump out of the 2024 presidential race; rather, it was intended to severely damage his candidacy. What better opponent for the bumbling, stumbling old Joe Biden than a badly wounded Donald Trump, increasingly considered by many to be unelectable?
But it didn’t work out that way. Despite Trump’s liabilities, Biden’s clearly deteriorating capability, his debate self-destruction, and the last-minute substitution of the exceedingly unready Kamala Harris all sealed the deal in the GOP’s favor. So, tough luck for the Democrats — but no harm, no foul, right?
Wrong. Democrats’ efforts to destroy Trump may not have won them the White House, but it actually was very effective in other ways and frighteningly consequential, as follows:
1.) We now have a president of the United States who is the most reviled in American history. Anyone who does not bother to examine the details has every reason to believe that our president is a crook, a convicted sex offender, and a convicted felon. Moreover, we hear regularly that he’s undermining our democracy, a dictator trying to take over our cities, and that, quite possibly, there will never be another presidential election.
2.) Hatred begets imminent, ongoing danger for the president, his associates, his family, and his visible supporters. We’ve seen it too many times — two attempts on Trump’s life, the brutal murder of Charlie Kirk, and a foiled assassination attempt on Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for starters. Making matters worse, Democrats are still at it. After a brief, not very respectful hiccup following Kirk’s killing, Democrat leaders and left-leaning media have consciously chosen to continue their baseless — and dangerous — Hitler/Nazi/fascist rhetoric.
3.) The slander directed at Trump adversely affects his international stature, to the nation’s detriment. That dynamic even spilled over to the Nobel Prize Committee, which evidently rationalized that no matter how successful he is at stopping world conflicts, their prize must go to a world leader who values democracy. Not Trump? I wonder where they got that idea?
4.) President Trump, combative as ever, is now turning the tables, using the same methods to attack those who attacked him. Conservative pundits argue that his retribution is necessary to prevent future lawfare recurrence. I disagree — I believe he is normalizing it.
5.) The poison seeps into every aspect of American life — every day, we see more anger, more violence, road rage, furious social media diatribes, the works. Americans seem okay with 100-plus consecutive nights of not-mainly-peaceful anti-ICE protests in Portland and have only a passing interest (and some smug approval) of vandalizing Teslas and Tesla dealerships because of Elon Musk’s DOGE efforts. We are becoming less civil by the day.
How do we un-bake that cake? The necessary first step is for our elected leaders to tone down the rhetoric, particularly on the Democrat side. So far, they’ve chosen not to. And on Trump’s side, his pre-election insistence that success is the best retribution was the right track — it can still serve him well, and he should return to it.
As we’ve learned throughout history, leadership works both ways, toward good and toward bad.
And a postscript that might help: As I am wrapping up this column, I am watching amazing events unfold in the Middle East. It seems that Trump, the convicted felon many consider unworthy of being our president, is the world leader and catalyst of the peace that no one thought possible. I’ll take that tradeoff any day.
