"The left would be just as suspicious of the authorities and defensive of the target."
 | By Vanessa Mobley Op-Ed Editor |
Is the F.B.I.'s search of Donald Trump's home akin to its investigation of Hillary Clinton's personal email system? Or is it more like the special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible Russian interference in the presidential election? |
We invited Rich Lowry, the editor in chief of National Review, to answer this question because we wanted to know — at this moment, when few facts are known — how he understands the Justice Department's decision to investigate Trump for unauthorized retention of government secrets. In his essay for Times Opinion, Lowry explores where the search at Mar-a-Lago is likely to lie on the continuum of investigations into sitting and former elected officials and candidates. |
"It's part of our national character to have a deeply ingrained distrust of political power, especially executive power, which is why both sides in our political divide have suspected the other of plotting to establish a dictatorship, going back to the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans in the 1790s," he writes. |
With references like the one above to Federalist No. 67 and in the tradition of Richard Hofstadter's observation (in the first sentence of his Harper's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics") that "American politics has often been an arena for angry minds," Lowry's essay is meant to invite readers to consider Trump's most recent legal trouble in a context broader than that of just the past six years of headlines. |
The result is an essay that suggests a truth that isn't often acknowledged in politics or really in many other arenas: "It would be better if more people acknowledged — life being complicated — that even someone you hate and fear can be treated unfairly." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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