If the Other Side’s Worst Conduct Is Your Best Defense, Your Defense Sucks

We're whatabouting ourselves into national failure.

Make no mistake about it. Top White House officials sharing, through an unsecured chat app, highly sensitive information about an impending U.S. airstrike on a terrorist group in the Middle East is a very big deal.

It’s not just a big deal because one of those officials accidentally invited a journalist into the chat, who was therefore made privy to the military-operation and its specifics.

It’s a big deal because the reporting exposed the extraordinary, assuredly prosecutable incompetence and disregard for national-security protocol by some of the highest-ranking cabinet members in the Trump administration. This includes Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who everyone knew at the time of his nomination was glaringly unqualified for the role.

Unsurprisingly, the reaction from the White House wasn’t to accept responsibility, and hold negligent officials accountable. It was to deny the reporting of the aforementioned journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, and call him a lying, biased hack. The move naturally backfired when Goldberg released the rest of the chat transcript, which confirmed his earlier reporting.

With all else failing, the MAGA-right did what political tribes often do in the face of totally indefensible scandals on their side of the aisle: Whatabout the crap out of it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was available material from which to do so.

As we all remember, Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, used an unsecured BlackBerry and private email-server for official government communications — a practice that could have easily been exploited by foreign intelligence agencies. Republicans were incensed about it at the time, and they were right to be. I argued then, and have argued in the years since, that Clinton should have been prosecuted.

But she wasn’t. From a legal perspective, she was entirely let off the hook.

Thus, in accordance with the plainly stated rules of whataboutism, no chat-app-using Republicans should face meaningful consequences for their actions. Both tribes should just return to their partisan corners… and live to “what about” another day.

It’s a routine that’s just sort of accepted in today’s politics, where principles are dead, the welfare of our country is often an afterthought, and all that really matters is which side is in power. It’s clearly an effective strategy for political survival, but what about the health of our nation?

Granting a partisan permission-slip to violate standards, rules, and laws only invites more violations. Excusing gross incompetence and recklessness that puts our nation at risk only leads to more incompetence, recklessness, and risk.

In other words, the problem goes well beyond the obvious hypocrisy of it all.

Everyone recognizes (and refuses to defend) unacceptable conduct when they see it from the opposition. Few these days are willing to recognize it from their side. The inevitable result is the acceptance of unacceptable conduct, and the further erosion of the standards and institutions that, in the past, have served Americans well.

If you believe that your political team is the better choice for the country, you should, for the sake of the nation, hold its leaders to higher standards than you do the other side. If you can’t, your side isn’t any better. And if you won’t, they’ll never be any better.