Donald and the Enablers

By Bret Stephens

Monday, October 10, 2016

Donald Trump emerged the victor from his debate Sunday night with Hillary Clinton, which means he slightly exceeded expectations by not spontaneously combusting on stage, which means his ardent loyalists have again absolved him of sin. “Congrats to my running mate @realDonaldTrump on a big debate win!” tweeted Mike Pence as soon as it ended. “Proud to stand with you as we #MAGA.”

That’s “Make America Great Again,” though at this stage in the campaign it could equally mean “Mount Another Genital Assault.”

The Indiana governor is supposed to be the sober side of Trump-Pence, the guy who keeps cool, knows his policy brief and imposes ideological discipline on a ticket that would otherwise blow whichever way Mr. Trump puffs. But that misreads Mr. Pence’s role in this disastrous GOP season. Mr. Pence isn’t his boss’s junior political partner. He’s his moral enabler.

I use “enabler” in the psychiatric sense, meaning, as Merriam-Webster has it, “one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior (as substance abuse) by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior.” The enabler gets the kids to school when you’re passed out drunk, mops up the mess in the bathroom, pays the bills, and makes things seem OK when they aren’t. Enablers like to think of themselves as altruists or heroes. In truth they’re accomplices.

Mr. Trump doesn’t have substance-abuse issues: His problem is the emission, not ingestion, of poison. As we learned from Friday’s disclosure of his 2005 exchange with Billy Bush, it gushes out of him at nearly every turn, not least in the patter of casual conversation. In the most hideous of Mr. Trump’s now-infamous sentences, it’s hard to decide which part is most repellent: the predatory verb “grab,” the dehumanized object “them,” or the pornographic prepositional phrase “by the p—.”

Normal people understand this, which is why Mr. Trump’s presidential chances are now next to nil. But his Republican enablers are not normal people.

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, variously defended the Republican nominee by invoking Jesus Christ and Monica Lewinsky’s stained blue dress, which is the type of disgusting association you’d expect from a defrocked priest.

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council brushed aside the controversy by insisting his support for Mr. Trump rested on “shared concerns” not “shared values.” That marks a milestone: The president of an organization ostensibly devoted to the preservation of family values has endorsed a man who wants to sleep with other men’s wives.

And then there’s Mr. Pence, a man whose job has been to provide evangelical cover to Mr. Trump’s meretricious version of New York values. That’s the sort of role he could have assumed the way an ER nurse approaches an Ebola patient—out of stern professional duty and through thick rubber gloves.

Instead, Mr. Pence has thrown himself into the work with relish, constantly vouchsafing the character of “this good man” Donald Trump. About most other politicians the claim would be a throwaway line, but in this case it amounts to something else: part self-deception and part outright deception, till the hope and the lie blur. Like every other enabler, Mr. Pence is desperate to make true what he knows is not.

On Saturday, after the video eruption, Mr. Pence seemed to have his own moral awakening, refusing to serve as Mr. Trump’s surrogate at an event in Wisconsin and hinting that he might pull out of the race if his running mate didn’t express sufficient contrition at Sunday’s debate. But Mr. Pence’s moment of clarity was as short-lived as Mr. Trump’s remorse. He now claims he never considered leaving the ticket.

What a shame for Mr. Pence to besmirch himself through dogged fidelity to a candidate whose own notions of loyalty are as one-way as his concept of marriage.

Then again, maybe I’m being too generous to the Indiana governor, whose dismay at Mr. Trump’s behavior might be as sincere as Captain Renault’s objections to gambling at Rick’s Cafe in “Casablanca.” If Mr. Pence is shocked, shocked to discover Mr. Trump is a cad, then he’s a fool. If he isn’t so shocked, he’s a cad, too. As Benjamin Franklin warned in “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.

It isn’t clear what all this means for Mr. Pence’s career. The larger question is what it says about the Republican Party that men like Mr. Pence remain willing to carry Mr. Trump to the finish line—and carry his insults, boasts, prejudices, predations, threats and lies with them. My guess is that it means the current GOP is nearly beyond redemption.

On Nov. 9 Republican voters will likely wake up to the reality that they have lost the White House, again, and that they have nobody but themselves to blame, again. As with every addict and enabler, the surest path to recovery begins at rock bottom.