This election frequently presents some of us with a great dilemma: When, if ever, is it okay to stoop to the other side's low standards? We now have Howard Dean — who let's remember was a doctor before he was a politician — is out there suggesting that Donald Trump's sniffling during the debate "might" be an indicator of a bad cocaine habit. Now, before I decide what I think about that, I have a few things to consider…
- I've always thought it was unseemly to try and do a medical diagnosis on a person from afar. It's unfair when a layman does it and much worse (and maybe unethical) when it's done by someone who's entitled to put "Doctor" before his or her name. Back when a woman named Terry Schiavo was on life support and this whole country took an abnormal interest in her situation, the Republican Senate majority leader was a man named Bill Frist, who was also a heart surgeon. He started spouting off medical opinions about her condition based on a few videotapes he'd seen of this woman he'd never examined. I thought that was very wrong — wrong for a leader to do that and wrong for a doctor to do that.
- I felt the same way when Hillary's enemies were recently out there claiming they had incontrovertible proof that her medical problem was not pneumonia but Parkinson's Disease. They did not have proof of that, no matter how desperately they wanted to believe that and make others believe it. They had unnamed sources and wild speculation.
- It also bothers me when people make an accusation without accepting responsibility for it. Trump does that a lot. It would be one thing if he said, "I believe my opponent kills puppies." It's more his style to say "Some people are saying my opponent kills puppies" without ever saying who those people are or why their accusation is worthy of considering. I mean, thanks to the Internet, we can find "some people" who think Elvis is living on Neptune with Hitler. That doesn't mean that needs to be part of a public discussion.
So there are two possible reactions to Howard Dean suggesting Trump is a coke freak and that someone should look into that. One is that it's just plain wrong the same way the Parkinson's thing was wrong and it's craven to hide behind "I'm not saying it's true…I'm just asking questions." That's another weasely Trump trick.
And the other, of course, is that it's nice to see Trump getting a dose of his own medicine. It's turnabout, it's fair play, it's fighting fire with fire. And it exposes hypocrisy when he screams "Foul!" about his own tactics being used against him.
I'm sorry. I don't like it. I understand it but I don't like it. There's an awful lot in this election I understand but I don't like…to say nothing of all the things I don't understand and don't like. It scares me that this might be what Politics will be like for the rest of my life.