Going Too Far

Journalists covering Washington as well as citizens like me have been wondering out loud and with some alarm, is anything the administration does ever going to be perceived as going too far?

For any one of the usual half dozen stories a day involving corruption, lies, political extremism and chaotic incompetence would have brought down another administration.  The President of the United States paying to silence a porn star is only one example of a headline that would have shaken the nation to its foundations in past times.

Yet this administration remains, apparently politically potent enough to scare the party into fealty.  It's not too surprising that the EPA Secretary's outrageous corruption hasn't gotten him fired, or the Energy secretary's merging of family business and diplomacy abroad, since the antipresident's corruption and that of his daughter and son-in-law are of a similar kind.  But this is the fear that shakes the foundations of the American system: the lack of any accountability.

So we're asking more and more, it is possible for anything at all to be perceived as going too far?

We do have some new candidates, some novel situations, all emerging on Monday. First of all, the teasing of a Tuesday announcement from the White House on the fate of the Iran deal to erase the threat of that country developing nuclear weapons for the next decade.  Will rejecting that be going too far?

It might, but in slow motion.  Given what has happened in the past two weeks, I expect the following to happen if the antipresident doesn't get cagey with some halfway measure but effectively takes the US out of the deal: the European signatories to the deal--especially France, Germany and the UK--will immediately announce their disapproval of the US action, and their intent to keep the deal, and perhaps even to take actions that counter the effect of renewed US sanctions.  Iran has already signaled that if Europe sticks with the deal, so will Iran.

The Iran president's statement is dripping with contempt for the US administration, and the European announcements, while likely to be a bit more diplomatic, will be effectively expressing the same contempt. What this contempt says is that the US is making itself irrelevant.  A photograph of European leaders with Iranian leaders as they reaffirm the agreement could be a very telling graphic representation, in more ways than one.

 This could be the most public demonstration so far of the growing isolation of the US in the world, which has been quietly growing since the antipresident's attempted withdrawing of the US from the Paris climate agreement.

Will that be perceived as going too far?  Maybe not immediately, but it might lead to situations that do.  A reaction to snubs that supercharges the nationalistic wing of the Rs may also result, and voters may eventually see this for the dangerous and self-defeating path it is.  And that's even without the spectre of warmongering that Europe and other nations will no longer even pretend to support.  This could cut it.

But two or three other stories may get there first.  Foremost among them for possible "going too far" disgust is AG Sessions announcement that children will be separated immediately and permanently from their parents at the border if they are illegal immigrants.  Taking babies from their mothers may be going too far.

Then there's the bizarre and still evolving story of a very scary security firm using deceptive tactics to get dirt on two mid-level former Obama administration officials to in some way help justify the US pulling out of the Iran deal.  Early Tuesday, yet another person revealed that she was warned by intelligence operatives that partisans of the antipresident were going to try the same tactics on her.

This is yet another strange twist to an ongoing onslaught of stories of political extremism, lies and now dirty tricks.  It's hard to predict which specific story could turn out to be the one that gets the response that this is going too far.  But this one may be it.

Finally, there is the Big Story that Jonathan Chiat believes is building: that says that the antipresident's shady business deals in the past involved such grievous crimes, including money laundering, that he could be--and probably is being blackmailed by those who could make such deals public, namely Russian oligarchs and therefore the Russian government.

It seems evident that his treatment of women or anything related to it is not going to be the tipping point. Slavishly trying to destroy the natural environment, cheapening the office and showing contempt for the law with open corruption, open cruelty to the poor and to entire nationalities and religions also have proven to so far not be tipping points.   But money laundering and blackmail very well could be, even given the ongoing attempts to attack the credibility of the various Mueller and grand jury investigations.  That just might be enough to make all--or nearly all--Americans deeply ashamed.