ANYTHING NEW? – AT 10:18 A.M. ET:  What can I tell you that's both new and accurate, about the Donald Trump Jr. scandal, soon to be described by CNN as the greatest scandal in the history of this or any other world?  Not much.  Nothing terribly new. 

In truth, had this been the Obama administration, with Michelle meeting with some Russian lawyer, the story would have never made the papers.

Lesson one in politics:  What happens to you will depend largely on who you are, not what you do.  R

Richard Nixon, not my favorite guy, was driven from office because he was Richard Nixon.  Watergate was a minor scandal that he mishandled.  Had it been Jack Kennedy in office, it would have been a hiccup.  And the Washinton Post, whose editor, Ben Bradlee, was a close personal friend of Kennedy's, wouldn't have shown the slightest interest.

Lyndon Johnson was essentially driven from office – forced out of the Democratic presidential race in 1968 – because he was Lyndon Johnson.  He was despised by the liberal, Ivy League wing of his own party, which pined for the days of finer music concerts in the White House.  Jack Kennedy, who in many ways I admired, made incredibly serious mistakes in his first year in office, but he was Jack Kennedy.  No calls from the mainstream media for his head.

Now there is a real, serious attempt to drive Donald Trump from office.  The American people dared elect him, and the American people must be punished.  True, Trump has brought much of this on himself.  He made too many enemies and not enough friends while running for president, and, unlike Reagan, hasn't reached out to potential allies since his inauguration.   He isn't, to use Arthur Miller's phrase from Death of a Salesman, "well-liked."

But Donald Trump is the elected president.  He is remarkably active and determined.  He is repairing the pathetic foreign policy of Field Marshal Obama and Grand Admiral Kerry.  He deserves a chance, and too many don't want to give him that chance.

That is what this is about – the determination to bring down a presidency by those who couldn't win an election.  It is of a piece with the dream of the political left to govern by non-democratic means, by investigations, harassment, court decisions and legal maneuvers.  Who needs those deplorables out there?

This is a critical time for this democracy.

July 12,  2017