The cookie jar is open. We appear to have seriously underestimated the size of the president-elect's hands.
The Atlantic magazine kept a running tally of the Clinton scandals. "From Whitewater to Benghazi: A Clinton-Scandal Primer" is still up at theatlantic.com. Like Jacob Marley's chain, its links were forged over the course of decades.
Now The Atlantic also has a webpage named "Donald Trump's Conflicts of Interest: A Crib Sheet."
Look at both of these pages with an unjaundiced eye. The Clintons look like petty amateurs already. Whitewater, for instance, was a kid's lemonade stand compared to any of Trump's hotel deals.
I wish the president-elect every success. Misfortune cannot happen in his presidency without it also befalling my country. At this point, though, I am quite sure of one thing. Whatever its successes or failures, a Donald Trump presidency is going to be expensive.
Before going on, a disclaimer; Double standards are an inherent vice of a two-party system. Imagine, for instance, the outrage we'd have heard from Democrats if President George W. Bush used executive orders as much as his successor to get around a majority opposition party in Congress.
Still, with partisanship fully accounted for, consider the firestorm we'd be seeing right now if Chelsea Clinton's mom had won and the younger Clinton acted like Ivanka Trump.
Picture Chelsea Clinton, head of the Clinton Foundation, present while her president-elect mom met with business partners from India who were building a Clinton-branded apartment complex in the metropolis of Mumbai. Suppose this meeting interrupted the schedule of working on the transition of President-elect Clinton into office. Eric Trump was there too -- so that's two of the siblings who are going to run the "blind trust" that keeps the president "out" of his business dealings once he assumes office.
Now suppose President-elect Clinton got an angry response from China over taking a phone call from the president of Taiwan -- where she wanted to build a couple of hotels. Or consider the expense of keeping a Secret Service detail at, say, Clinton Foundation headquarters.
Now suppose the ambassador from Kuwait abruptly changed the booking for the celebration of his country's independence day on Feb. 25 from one hotel to a Clinton-owned hotel in Washington, D.C. Now suppose Hillary Clinton's lease of that hotel specifically barred her from holding federal office.
There's no need to keep piling on the examples. It's all a few mouse clicks away at The Atlantic's website. Suffice it to say there's enough duplicity involved here to have put Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., into a coma if a Clinton had done any of it.
I guess we should all be grateful. We don't have to put up with years of congressional committee alchemy attempts as members of Congress try to turn base metal into felony, impeachment-worthy gold. Instead, impeachment-worthy gold would be turned into lead. The White House should change the presidential anthem from "Hail to the Chief" to Cole Porter's "Anything Goes."
Speaking of anything being OK these days, consider the Russians. It should come as no surprise that Russia -- or anybody else -- considers the election of the president of the United States to be a big deal. Of course they wanted to influence the outcome. That's realpolitik. We've intervened in foreign elections since at least the Italian election of 1948.
The shocking thing about the Russian connection, therefore, isn't that they had the power, the will -- and the lack of subtlety -- to act as they did. What's shocking is how little our voters cared. They could still have voted for Trump -- no, Russian meddling does nothing to discredit our election -- but at least been offended.
Iranians still hate us (in part) for setting up a coup in their country in 1953, with the able assistance of the British. We find out the Russians are hacking election headquarters and our response can fairly be summarized as "Really? What did they find?"
Again, apply the Clinton standard. If the Russians had done this on behalf of Hillary Clinton, what would the reaction have been?
My bet is it would go something like what the aforementioned Mr. Porter described:
"Times have changed
And we've often rewound the clock
Since the Puritans got a shock
When they landed on Plymouth Rock.
If today
Any shock they should try to stem
'Stead of landing on Plymouth Rock,
Plymouth Rock would land on them."
Commentary on 12/31/2016