"The office asks: can this person continue to serve the interests they were entrusted to protect?"
I am in awe of that sentence.
This is a truly wonderful essay, and I will be saving the permalink forever, and undoubtedly inserting it repeatedly into my comments in various other places such as the Toronto Star. Let me explain.
Here in Toronto, and I am sure in many other towns and cities elsewhere, there are media reports of police officers who are currently being investigated for their involvement in activities that are either instantly recognizable as outright criminal (if committed by anyone else) or indistinguishably close to it.
The allegations have not yet been tested in court because the lawyers who work for the police service union are superlative experts in delaying tactics that would be widely and publicly condemned if committed by anyone else's lawyers.
And while those police officers are waiting for legal or disciplinary action to be taken, they are sitting at home, or maybe even working another job, while collecting their full pay as police officers, including bonuses. Sometimes for years. After all, they have not been convicted in a court of law, and therefore must be presumed innocent.
And when the time of trial and judgment is finally approaching, they will often retire with full pension, and the charges against them are therefore deemed moot and are never prosecuted further.
What this does to the public perception of the integrity of the police service can I'm sure be imagined by readers. The old-fashioned but eloquent phrase up here is "bringing the administration of justice into disrepute." But I am sure that Shakespeare had multiple more poetic descriptions.
Thank you, Mr. Brock, for explaining so clearly the deep discomfort that so many of us have been feeling without the words to express it..
A fucking violently racist pedophile who openly brags about being able to harass women and get away with it is currently the president of my country. I am sick of people saying we should hold restraint when it comes to punishment for the grotesque failings of people in power, especially since it usually the same people who also complain about progressives not being tough enough on crime.
Trump should resign, yes. Everyone should demand it. And he should be impeached if he doesn't go. And he should be in jail for his crimes. I strongly agree with this. If my writing has left you with any other impression of where I stand on that, then let me disabuse you of it now.
If I could just play devil's advocate here as I continue to process this essay...
1) Then should there not be a mechanism for the people who PUT him into office to make the decision (via a vote) as to whether THEY believe he should remain in office while things shake out?
2) Does this not potentially create a ripe environment (for those who want to manipulate our government, elections, etc.) to more likely use AI in a nefarious way, or pay people to accuse someone in order to drive certain politicians from office as a means to shift the balance of power?
3) Would this make people less likely to run for office -- spending their time, energy, money -- if, upon being accused (even if it's false), the expectation is to immediately depart?
4) Or are we talking matters of degree? In other words, one seemingly suspicious accusation does not warrant departure, but multiple accusations do?
I just think one must always understand that an office of public trust is bigger than ones self. That its a privilege to serve. And public service in a office of public trust is only virtuous when it is approached with a focus on "what is best for the institution and the people it serves?"
A political leader who should be focused on the most pressing matters of the public interest, is instead focused on fighting in the court of public opinion over a public scandal, cannot honestly meet this obligation. Their job isn't to be a placeholder for a team. That's a corruption of public service.
So I don't really think there's anything one can do other than resign their post when one becomes the subject of sustained public scandal. It's not about what's fair to you. Because the office isn't about you.
We are all faced with circumstances through the course of our lives where our circumstances feel unfair. Where they feel unjust. And one must in these moments consider whether obligations are to the people who rely on them—and when that's political office, it's your entire constituency. If they're thinking about your sex scandal every day, they're thinking about you and what's fair to you. It is unfair to everyone else who wants a political representative focused on things that are about them.
And these things differ on a case-by-case basis. Some scandals can be survived because only a subset of people care about them. But one can tell clearly when something is going to stick, when its no going away. And when that feeling is felt, it's time to take one for the team.
Yes, I totally understand your point of view and lean very heavily in favor of it. But I'd be lying if I said I was completely comfortable with it... thus my ruminations.
I will say this. Given the depths to which many Republican "leaders" have fallen, I can imagine a significant number of democrats concluding that they no longer care if (D) Congressman So-and-So screwed his intern. I have several friends who are so bloody tired of the double-standard that they are willing to overlook certain indiscretions in order to not risk losing what little power we currently have. (It's a shitty place for the mind to reside.)
Lastly, lest anyone misconstrue my thoughts, I am not, in any form or fashion, excusing the serious, atrocious, and immoral behavior, of which many men in power have been accused.
I'm not comfortable with the idea of someone having to resign their post under false accusation either. Nobody should be.
Character is about being willing to act out of virtue, even when it means losing something. If you're only willing to do then right thing when it doesn't cost you anything, then you're not really virtuous at all.
Yes, virtue is a good thing [Jamie chuckles], but I'm a bit afraid that we are dancing dangerously close to the purity zone.
If someone is falsely accused, and, out of an act of virtue departs immediately, are they really the only one who experiences the cost? It's not just a loss for the falsely accused, but a loss for all who spent years helping that individual succeed, and all those who voted for and now rely on that individual's voice/vote in Congress. It can be an enormous cost for the constituents, some of whom live paycheck to paycheck, have difficulty affording food for their kids, or paying their rent, or the cost of gas to get to work. Losing someone in a position of power who fights for the many is a huge cost that goes well beyond the cost to the virtuous man. And for that reason, my brain is asking me if there is a better balance to be found.
Character also involves, at least in my opinion, standing up for yourself (if truth is on your side), even in a shit-storm. That is a "good" in my book. I respect people who stand up for themselves. Not to mention the fact that if you're not going to stand up for yourself, should I really expect you to stand up for me? For others?
Yes, I agree, some storms are likely to become so severe that the work you were sent to do will become impossible to accomplish and departure is necessary. It's those OTHER storms (again, if truth is on your side) -- where there might be a bit of a dust-up -- that lead me to believe that the virtue might be found when the team fights together.
Ah, but you have a right to stand up for yourself if you're falsely accused. You can sue them defamation. And seek compensation for the fact that you were forced to give up your role as a result of their lie. This is what defamation lawsuits are for. That's why we, as a society, have torts such as this.
Yes, that's true. And that individual may very well receive just compensation. But that doesn't remedy the potential loss/cost for all the other people affected by the individual's removal. That's the greater loss that gives me some pause.
I was going to make a similar point. I’m not with Mike on this one. In general, I do not disagree, but only if the accusation is valid (more or less). Otherwise there is no protection whatsoever against false or spurious accusations or investigations, which can be and are generated like maggots by the media and other powerful and very bad faith actors behind the scenes - as in the case of Jeremy Corbin being relentlessly (falsely) accused of anti-semitism. Or Bill Clinton being relentlessly pursued by what his wife correctly called a vast right-wing conspiracy to unseat a sitting president. Or Donald Trump being relentlessly investigated on the basis of specious evidence in concocted legal operations designed by his political opponents (I mean Russiagate, which Taibbi got right).
The injury when these various forms of sabotage are brought to bear is not primarily to the individual politician but to the public which put him/her in office. It’s an attack on democracy itself, first and foremost. Thus, first and foremost, the moral focus should be on the devious and deceitful operators hurling the accusations, who should not be set aside or go unnoticed. The politician in the individual case can still keep the principle Mike described here in hand, but an office holder does not necessarily have any moral obligation to resign simply because an obstructive allegation comes along.
Yes, the potential threat to democracy is quite concerning. But I also don't want to minimize seemingly legitimate accusations (I know you don't either). When I read the accusations against Swalwell, collectively they rang true to me. Yes, he has every right to pursue what he says are false accusations, but I think to address that while trying to run for Governor was a non-starter. (And, going back and rereading Mike's comments, he provides room for the idea that certain scandals can weather the storm, while others, like Swalwell's, would be less likely to given the gravity of the accusations.)
I think there is a related dynamic here which somewhat informs what is described in this article.
It is that voters have come to expect that they will be permitted to have their choice of officeholder actually serve in that office, come what may.
This can be most evidently seen in various amicus briefs in Trump v. Anderson, where in the briefs in favour of Donald, some argued that whether or not he was disqualified from holding office, it would abrogate the voters' right to vote (that is, to exercise active suffrage) were he to be barred from running (because he did not enjoy passive suffrage). This demonstrates a lack of understanding of active suffrage (which inherently does not encompass the right to vote for someone who lacks passive suffrage) but also includes within it an expectation that whoever wins an election will be permitted to serve in the office to which they are elected, come what may, and the more high profile the office, the stronger this tendency (which is part of why convicting an impeached US President is so difficult, and partly why Bob Menendez never quit until he was convicted, and why it took a while for the US House to boot George Santos out).
It can also be seen in the suggestions I saw that Theresa May was not legitimately Prime Minister until after she'd formed a government following the 2017 election in the UK (the same logic would presumably apply to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak), or the statement sometimes seen that Kim Campbell doesn't really count as Canada's first female Prime Minister, or the disinformation spread about back in late March 2025 that Mark Carney wasn't legitimately our Prime Minister at the time because he hadn't won an election.
The fault for this, therefore, I submit lies in part with the expectation from some voters that they will be able to have their choice of officeholder regardless of other constraints. (It may be magnified with the US Presidency specifically because there is no mechanism by which the voters may shortly thereafter select a new President should the current incumbent leave office prematurely; contrast, say, South Korea where after the removal of Yoon Suk Yeol his successor was chosen by popular election.)
The arguments in Anderson are very similar to the "recent" mis/re-understanding of "freedom of religion" - that a restriction on bad behavior in the name of religion is somehow a violation of the first amendment.
I kid you not when I say that one objection I saw to the claim in Anderson v. Griswold, compared to other restrictions on holding office, is that the others are "fair" and everyone knows about them whereas the provision at issue in that case felt like a "gotcha" because it was generally thought of as a dead letter and not taught in ordinary civics classes.
So even though the restriction on non-native-born citizens has every bit as much legal force as the restriction on oathbreaking insurrectionists, these people would tell you that the former should be fully adjudicable because everyone already knows about it going in--never mind that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". (As the person who first pointed out the 14th Amendment argument to me observed, it's easier to adjudicate that case than it was to adjudicate the Obama, McCain and Cruz native-born cases--all of which did reach the merits somewhere and all of which concluded "yes of course he's eligible, you moron"--because the latter relied on stuff like digging up decades-old birth records and finding surviving pregnancy ward nurses while the former involved recent, well-documented events with a firmly established and largely uncontestable fact pattern.)
"The office asks: can this person continue to serve the interests they were entrusted to protect?"
I am in awe of that sentence.
This is a truly wonderful essay, and I will be saving the permalink forever, and undoubtedly inserting it repeatedly into my comments in various other places such as the Toronto Star. Let me explain.
Here in Toronto, and I am sure in many other towns and cities elsewhere, there are media reports of police officers who are currently being investigated for their involvement in activities that are either instantly recognizable as outright criminal (if committed by anyone else) or indistinguishably close to it.
The allegations have not yet been tested in court because the lawyers who work for the police service union are superlative experts in delaying tactics that would be widely and publicly condemned if committed by anyone else's lawyers.
And while those police officers are waiting for legal or disciplinary action to be taken, they are sitting at home, or maybe even working another job, while collecting their full pay as police officers, including bonuses. Sometimes for years. After all, they have not been convicted in a court of law, and therefore must be presumed innocent.
And when the time of trial and judgment is finally approaching, they will often retire with full pension, and the charges against them are therefore deemed moot and are never prosecuted further.
What this does to the public perception of the integrity of the police service can I'm sure be imagined by readers. The old-fashioned but eloquent phrase up here is "bringing the administration of justice into disrepute." But I am sure that Shakespeare had multiple more poetic descriptions.
Thank you, Mr. Brock, for explaining so clearly the deep discomfort that so many of us have been feeling without the words to express it..
Tiabbi is problematic for a host of reasons, not the least of which was his conduct in Russia.
"The concept is this: the seat does not belong to you."I wish more people holding office were aware of this fact. So many are not.
A fucking violently racist pedophile who openly brags about being able to harass women and get away with it is currently the president of my country. I am sick of people saying we should hold restraint when it comes to punishment for the grotesque failings of people in power, especially since it usually the same people who also complain about progressives not being tough enough on crime.
Trump should resign, yes. Everyone should demand it. And he should be impeached if he doesn't go. And he should be in jail for his crimes. I strongly agree with this. If my writing has left you with any other impression of where I stand on that, then let me disabuse you of it now.
If I could just play devil's advocate here as I continue to process this essay...
1) Then should there not be a mechanism for the people who PUT him into office to make the decision (via a vote) as to whether THEY believe he should remain in office while things shake out?
2) Does this not potentially create a ripe environment (for those who want to manipulate our government, elections, etc.) to more likely use AI in a nefarious way, or pay people to accuse someone in order to drive certain politicians from office as a means to shift the balance of power?
3) Would this make people less likely to run for office -- spending their time, energy, money -- if, upon being accused (even if it's false), the expectation is to immediately depart?
4) Or are we talking matters of degree? In other words, one seemingly suspicious accusation does not warrant departure, but multiple accusations do?
I just think one must always understand that an office of public trust is bigger than ones self. That its a privilege to serve. And public service in a office of public trust is only virtuous when it is approached with a focus on "what is best for the institution and the people it serves?"
A political leader who should be focused on the most pressing matters of the public interest, is instead focused on fighting in the court of public opinion over a public scandal, cannot honestly meet this obligation. Their job isn't to be a placeholder for a team. That's a corruption of public service.
So I don't really think there's anything one can do other than resign their post when one becomes the subject of sustained public scandal. It's not about what's fair to you. Because the office isn't about you.
We are all faced with circumstances through the course of our lives where our circumstances feel unfair. Where they feel unjust. And one must in these moments consider whether obligations are to the people who rely on them—and when that's political office, it's your entire constituency. If they're thinking about your sex scandal every day, they're thinking about you and what's fair to you. It is unfair to everyone else who wants a political representative focused on things that are about them.
And these things differ on a case-by-case basis. Some scandals can be survived because only a subset of people care about them. But one can tell clearly when something is going to stick, when its no going away. And when that feeling is felt, it's time to take one for the team.
Yes, I totally understand your point of view and lean very heavily in favor of it. But I'd be lying if I said I was completely comfortable with it... thus my ruminations.
I will say this. Given the depths to which many Republican "leaders" have fallen, I can imagine a significant number of democrats concluding that they no longer care if (D) Congressman So-and-So screwed his intern. I have several friends who are so bloody tired of the double-standard that they are willing to overlook certain indiscretions in order to not risk losing what little power we currently have. (It's a shitty place for the mind to reside.)
Lastly, lest anyone misconstrue my thoughts, I am not, in any form or fashion, excusing the serious, atrocious, and immoral behavior, of which many men in power have been accused.
I'm not comfortable with the idea of someone having to resign their post under false accusation either. Nobody should be.
Character is about being willing to act out of virtue, even when it means losing something. If you're only willing to do then right thing when it doesn't cost you anything, then you're not really virtuous at all.
Yes, virtue is a good thing [Jamie chuckles], but I'm a bit afraid that we are dancing dangerously close to the purity zone.
If someone is falsely accused, and, out of an act of virtue departs immediately, are they really the only one who experiences the cost? It's not just a loss for the falsely accused, but a loss for all who spent years helping that individual succeed, and all those who voted for and now rely on that individual's voice/vote in Congress. It can be an enormous cost for the constituents, some of whom live paycheck to paycheck, have difficulty affording food for their kids, or paying their rent, or the cost of gas to get to work. Losing someone in a position of power who fights for the many is a huge cost that goes well beyond the cost to the virtuous man. And for that reason, my brain is asking me if there is a better balance to be found.
Character also involves, at least in my opinion, standing up for yourself (if truth is on your side), even in a shit-storm. That is a "good" in my book. I respect people who stand up for themselves. Not to mention the fact that if you're not going to stand up for yourself, should I really expect you to stand up for me? For others?
Yes, I agree, some storms are likely to become so severe that the work you were sent to do will become impossible to accomplish and departure is necessary. It's those OTHER storms (again, if truth is on your side) -- where there might be a bit of a dust-up -- that lead me to believe that the virtue might be found when the team fights together.
Ah, but you have a right to stand up for yourself if you're falsely accused. You can sue them defamation. And seek compensation for the fact that you were forced to give up your role as a result of their lie. This is what defamation lawsuits are for. That's why we, as a society, have torts such as this.
Yes, that's true. And that individual may very well receive just compensation. But that doesn't remedy the potential loss/cost for all the other people affected by the individual's removal. That's the greater loss that gives me some pause.
I was going to make a similar point. I’m not with Mike on this one. In general, I do not disagree, but only if the accusation is valid (more or less). Otherwise there is no protection whatsoever against false or spurious accusations or investigations, which can be and are generated like maggots by the media and other powerful and very bad faith actors behind the scenes - as in the case of Jeremy Corbin being relentlessly (falsely) accused of anti-semitism. Or Bill Clinton being relentlessly pursued by what his wife correctly called a vast right-wing conspiracy to unseat a sitting president. Or Donald Trump being relentlessly investigated on the basis of specious evidence in concocted legal operations designed by his political opponents (I mean Russiagate, which Taibbi got right).
The injury when these various forms of sabotage are brought to bear is not primarily to the individual politician but to the public which put him/her in office. It’s an attack on democracy itself, first and foremost. Thus, first and foremost, the moral focus should be on the devious and deceitful operators hurling the accusations, who should not be set aside or go unnoticed. The politician in the individual case can still keep the principle Mike described here in hand, but an office holder does not necessarily have any moral obligation to resign simply because an obstructive allegation comes along.
Yes, the potential threat to democracy is quite concerning. But I also don't want to minimize seemingly legitimate accusations (I know you don't either). When I read the accusations against Swalwell, collectively they rang true to me. Yes, he has every right to pursue what he says are false accusations, but I think to address that while trying to run for Governor was a non-starter. (And, going back and rereading Mike's comments, he provides room for the idea that certain scandals can weather the storm, while others, like Swalwell's, would be less likely to given the gravity of the accusations.)
This is a great illustration how we have accepted the slow perversion of language to corrupt our democracy and miseducate the citizenry.
Mike, in twenty years as an officer in the military, followed by thirty in the C-suite , I’ve never heard this expressed better. Thank you.
You completely nailed it. I'll add that Matt Taibbi has a deeply, personal reason for representing the sexual misconduct point of view.
If only they understood this.
The Pollies and the People!
Excellent point, and one that has long disappeared from our political discourse. It also applies to the executive branch.
I think there is a related dynamic here which somewhat informs what is described in this article.
It is that voters have come to expect that they will be permitted to have their choice of officeholder actually serve in that office, come what may.
This can be most evidently seen in various amicus briefs in Trump v. Anderson, where in the briefs in favour of Donald, some argued that whether or not he was disqualified from holding office, it would abrogate the voters' right to vote (that is, to exercise active suffrage) were he to be barred from running (because he did not enjoy passive suffrage). This demonstrates a lack of understanding of active suffrage (which inherently does not encompass the right to vote for someone who lacks passive suffrage) but also includes within it an expectation that whoever wins an election will be permitted to serve in the office to which they are elected, come what may, and the more high profile the office, the stronger this tendency (which is part of why convicting an impeached US President is so difficult, and partly why Bob Menendez never quit until he was convicted, and why it took a while for the US House to boot George Santos out).
It can also be seen in the suggestions I saw that Theresa May was not legitimately Prime Minister until after she'd formed a government following the 2017 election in the UK (the same logic would presumably apply to Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak), or the statement sometimes seen that Kim Campbell doesn't really count as Canada's first female Prime Minister, or the disinformation spread about back in late March 2025 that Mark Carney wasn't legitimately our Prime Minister at the time because he hadn't won an election.
The fault for this, therefore, I submit lies in part with the expectation from some voters that they will be able to have their choice of officeholder regardless of other constraints. (It may be magnified with the US Presidency specifically because there is no mechanism by which the voters may shortly thereafter select a new President should the current incumbent leave office prematurely; contrast, say, South Korea where after the removal of Yoon Suk Yeol his successor was chosen by popular election.)
The arguments in Anderson are very similar to the "recent" mis/re-understanding of "freedom of religion" - that a restriction on bad behavior in the name of religion is somehow a violation of the first amendment.
But hey, if I'm allowed to have my choice of office holder regardless of other constraints... Mamdani for President!
I kid you not when I say that one objection I saw to the claim in Anderson v. Griswold, compared to other restrictions on holding office, is that the others are "fair" and everyone knows about them whereas the provision at issue in that case felt like a "gotcha" because it was generally thought of as a dead letter and not taught in ordinary civics classes.
So even though the restriction on non-native-born citizens has every bit as much legal force as the restriction on oathbreaking insurrectionists, these people would tell you that the former should be fully adjudicable because everyone already knows about it going in--never mind that "ignorance of the law is no excuse". (As the person who first pointed out the 14th Amendment argument to me observed, it's easier to adjudicate that case than it was to adjudicate the Obama, McCain and Cruz native-born cases--all of which did reach the merits somewhere and all of which concluded "yes of course he's eligible, you moron"--because the latter relied on stuff like digging up decades-old birth records and finding surviving pregnancy ward nurses while the former involved recent, well-documented events with a firmly established and largely uncontestable fact pattern.)