Politics And The Presumption Of Benevolence

     It’s been said many times that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. Also, trust once lost is even harder to regain. When the subject is political trust, deep motives and the suspicion thereof are involved. A political party or organization that forfeits the public’s trust will usually find that it has become non-viable.

     This may be the case with the Democrat Party, which has fallen so far and so fast that its recovery seems unimaginable.

     Deep motives are those that touch on the presumption of benevolence. To be viable in these United States, a political party must be presumed to mean well. If so, then when its policies lead to a bad result, the public will assume that it was mistaken rather than malevolent. Should the public conclude that the bad result was the intended result, the presumption of benevolence is shaken. Some fancy footwork is required to preserve it.

     This morning, Ace presents this snippet from God-knows-where:

     dan turrentine @danturrentine

     Hard as a D to read the Wash Post story and not laugh/cry. Amidst the talk of communication failure and message choices, no mention of the central reason for all these struggles: Biden’s declining mental acuity and the iron handcuffs it produced. He was the least public-facing and publicly engaged President of the modern TV era, not because they thought it was good politics, but out of necessity to hide his condition. For so many to omit, let alone focus on, this fact is embarrassing. The D Party will struggle to regain public trust and confidence until it comes to public terms with the charade.

     Now add this bit of arrogance:

🚨 NEW: Chuck Schumer claims Democrats lost in 2024 because people didn’t realize “how much we had done for them”. pic.twitter.com/KzpyO9QjZW

— Blake (@_BlakeHabyan) January 5, 2025

     Do you see how this undermines the presumption of Democrat Party benevolence, Gentle Reader? The Democrats’ kingmakers chose Biden as their candidate because he had the best chance of defeating President Trump and for no other reason. The phrase that best captured their choice was “he has the fewest negatives.” But to install Biden as president and keep him there required a four-year-long campaign of deception and concealment, carried out by prominent Democrats and their boughten allies in the media. Given the great suffering wrought during Biden’s tenure as president, it’s nearly impossible to believe that he or his handlers meant well toward America and Americans.

     “We mean well” is hardly compatible with “You mustn’t be allowed to learn the truth.” Combine them with a blanket refusal to admit to the suffering Democrat policies have wrought – what else can it mean to insist that the Democrats’ 2024 losses were about “messaging?” – and the clash becomes insoluble.

     Wave goodbye to the public’s presumption of Democrat Party benevolence. Regaining it may not be possible.

     Republican diehards beware: this is not an unmixed blessing. Yes, for the moment it’s better to have the Republicans in command in Washington. But a political party that lacks a viable opponent has little to hold its baser impulses in check. The dynamic of power guarantees that men of low morals – there are some in every political party, including the GOP – will make use of the opportunities this affords them to operate largely unchecked. Malfeasance and corruption will always find such opportunities. The lack of a competitor ready to capitalize on Republican sins makes them easy to exploit.

     The GOP can forfeit the public’s presumption of benevolence just as has befallen the Democrats. The lack of a viable opponent poised to exploit Republican errors and crimes increases the probability thereof. Draw the moral!