Ukraine scandal is a microcosm of what we already know: Trump's presidency is a failure [View all]

[malaise]

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-11-17/trumps-ukraine-scandal-microcosm-bad-president
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It’s easy to get drawn into the drama of the Ukraine story, to be mesmerized by that country’s war against Russia and its brazen corruption, by characters like Hunter Biden and Paul Manafort and Lev and Igor and the ever-shifting cast of presidents, prosecutors, diplomats and criminals. We’re all learning more than we ever thought we’d know about Kyiv and its internal politics as the House of Representatives focuses its impeachment inquiry on a narrow set of allegations about President Trump’s misbehavior there.

But even as members of Congress zoom in tightly on Ukraine, it’s important that the rest of us not lose sight of the bigger picture. The Ukraine scandal is, at the end of the day, really just a microcosm, a single piece of a much broader story about this president. What he is accused of doing there is, to one degree or another, what he does everywhere, and it speaks to who he is — his character, his style, his values and his failure as president.

So let’s not ignore the wider context in which these allegations have emerged.

Trump, as this page has noted repeatedly, is a man for whom everything is transactional, and who is engaged in a constant struggle for short-term advantage. Blustering, bullying, threatening and arm-twisting are his tools. He doesn’t feel bound by the rules and niceties that have guided most of his predecessors, or by the constitutional and institutional limits that have constrained them. Norms, shared values, civil institutions and even the rule of law take a back seat, in his playbook, to the ceaseless struggle for the upper hand. He doesn’t seem to make much distinction between what’s good for America and what’s good for him personally. His disdain for the truth and his attraction to conspiracy theories are well known.