I wrote for Politico today about the Russia obsession and its risks:
Scandal politics is always very tempting, and the Left, especially TV personalities like Rachel Maddow, have given in to it utterly. Its allure is understandable:
It’s easy. You don’t have to do any of the hard work of public persuasion or re-examine any of your assumptions. Robert Mueller is your deus ex machina.
It creates the delicious possibility of your adversaries not just being defeated or humiliated, but being ruined and sent to jail. “Lock them up.”
It transforms politics into a legal whodunit, with the Trump administration not just the locus of politics and policies you abhor, but an active crime scene to be tantalizingly dissected clue by clue.
It offers the promise of vindicating your core belief that the 2016 election wasn’t lost but stolen from you. Winning the midterms wouldn’t be nearly as emotionally satisfying as righting the presumed wrong of Trump’s election by exposing the malefactors truly responsible for it.