When This Blows Over

Did the sterling résumés of Jonathan Gruber* and
Ezekiel Emanuel prove to us that Obamacare was
both fair and smart?
What good did grifting for all those hundreds of millions
of dollars do for the Clintons in their sunset years? Do
they look healthier and haler for their frenzied pursuit of
lucre? Did they gain greater respect and acclaim, the
richer they became, or are they resting in peace with the
assurance of lives well lived? Are they finally deemed
successful for scamming that last $50 million in their
pay-for-play scheming? Did daily fibbing make Hillary
more virtuous? Can a Yale law graduate make a mockery
of the law in ways a tractor driver from Mendota cannot
— given the greater power to do good or evil that is a
dividend of greater education and status? Did Barack
Obama’s prize-winning Harvard professors teach him
about the constitutional limits of the presidency?
Or, instead, does moral regress sometimes come with
material and intellectual progress?
Size up the 2016 campaign, and our self-acclaimed wise
— defined by their ubiquity in the media, their glib ability
to assert that up is down, and down up, their tony school
brands — often became utterly foolish. A garish Donald
Trump did not need to hire supposedly brilliant politicos
to defeat supposedly brilliant politicos on the other side.