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Romney Is Wrong About the President and the Presidency

Oh, great. Mitt Romney is lecturing us about character and decency now. The new year is already shaping up to be a hectoring and annoying one.

Romney, the new U.S. Senator from Utah (by way of Michigan, Massachusetts, and California), took to the opinion pages of the Washington Post on Wednesday to chide Donald Trump, whose character the failed 2012 Republican presidential candidate finds wanting.

“On balance, his conduct over the past two years, particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office,” Romney wrote in an op-ed that should remind everyone why Trump wiped the floor with establishment Republican candidates in 2016.

Romney offers some tepid praise for some of the president’s appointments and policy victories, lauding Trump’s court appointments, deregulation efforts, tax code overhaul, and criminal justice reforms.

“But policies and appointments are only a part of a presidency,” Romney admonishes.

Much of the piece is warmed over chamber of commerce boilerplate. But the real problem is Romney’s premise.

“To a great degree,” Romney contends, “a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow ‘our better angels.’”

This is wrong, and dangerously so . . .

Read the rest at the Sacramento Bee.

Photo credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

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