Source: CNN
By Paul Waldman
Paul Waldman is a senior writer with The American Prospect, a left-leaning magazine, and a blogger for The Washington Post. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)Donald Trump has a way of making ordinarily reasonable people get over-agitated. His campaign for the presidency has been decried not just by Democrats but by Republicans, foreign leaders, writers and artists and actors, and now Supreme Court justice and pop culture icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
When Ginsburg criticized Trump in a few interviews earlier this week, the overwhelming reaction, even from those who admire her as a jurist, was that she had made a mistake.
But was she wrong?
Supreme Court justices are supposed to be above partisanship, at least pretending not to be concerned with who wins an election. After all, we wouldn’t want Clarence Thomas speaking at the Republican convention or Sonia Sotomayor out stumping with Hillary Clinton; that would undercut the legitimacy of the court as the final arbiter of legal disputes, many of which involve the President and the administration.
After a couple of days of criticism, Ginsburg released a statement saying, “On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them,” because “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.”
Photos: Today’s Supreme Court
The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court sit for their official photograph on October 8, 2010, at the Supreme Court. Front row, from left: Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Anthony M. Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Back row, from left: Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer, Samuel Alito Jr. and Elena Kagan. Scalia was found dead on February 13 at a Texas ranch he was visiting.
We all understand that Supreme Court justices care about partisan contests, since they have ideological preferences just like anyone else. Ruth Bader Ginsburg apparently wants Clinton to win, just as her colleagues may well want someone else to win.
But if one of the other candidates had become the Republican nominee, there’s no way she would have made these kind of remarks. She didn’t do it because of Trump’s plan to cut taxes for the wealthy, his proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, or his opposition to abortion rights. All the other candidates shared those positions.
She did it because Trump presents a unique threat to democracy itself, one that stands outside ideological and partisan differences.
Trump is that kind of threat not because he knows virtually nothing about policy (though that’s true), or because he’s crass and crude (also true) or because he lies constantly (undeniable). He’s a threat because he rejects so many of the basic ideas on which our democracy is based.
He talks about “open[ing] up the libel laws” so he can sue news organizations to punish them for being critical of him. He has spoken again and again not just about his admiration for dictators, but his approval of their most brutal methods.
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