A question for defenders of President Donald Trump: What if President Barack Obama had done this?
I know it has become almost a cliché by now, but can you imagine how Republicans would've reacted if President Barack Obama had behaved like President Donald Trump is behaving now?
Yes, it's time to update my WIODT -- What If Obama Did This -- list, which is unrelated although remarkably like HBO host Bill Maher's "If Obama Did It" lists.
What if Obama, while running for reelection, had asked a foreign government's president to find damaging information on Mitt Romney or another of his rising Republican challengers?
What if Obama had backed up that big ask by putting a hold on nearly $400 million in American taxpayers' money that Congress had appropriated to help that country fend off its mighty neighbor Russia, with which it has been engaged in military actions?
What if Obama deflected questions about his actions by raising questions about a rising Republican opponent who already had been investigated and cleared?
And what if Obama said he was trying to "find out about" the unnamed whistleblower, reportedly an intelligence officer whose revelations ignited the impeachment push, whom the president compared to "a spy" -- and then fondly reminisced about past days in which our government put spies before firing squads?
Yes, we can guess from past experience that congressional Republicans would not greet such words and actions by a Democratic president with the passive ho-hum, "Nothing to see here," attitude that most have awarded to President Trump.
In today's polarized political landscape, the WIODT test offers a clarifying X-ray lens to see through clouds of partisan spin.
The point: We should judge our presidents by the highest standards, not by what they sometimes get away with. Trump has had remarkable success at normalizing policies that used to seem unacceptable: cagelike family detention camps, neglect of Puerto Ricans and some other Americans displaced by natural disasters, hush money shoveled out to the president's former mistresses, presidential profiting from hotel and resort businesses while serving as president? That's just for starters.
But this scandal is different. Democrats were dispirited after special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation found improprieties but kicked the ball back to Congress. A long-standing Justice Department policy exempts sitting presidents from prosecution.
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