FORGIVE, BUT DON'T FORGET.

From time to time I have taken writers for The Bulwark to task for abandoning their purportedly conservative principles to carry water for Democrats as a way of showing their disgust with Donald Trump.

Let us, thus, be grateful for an Act of Contrition offered by Mona Charen. We Elected Biden to Be Better Than This.  Yes, you might have been among the people who thought Joe Biden to be an anodyne Democrat, but didn't you notice him running on Bernie Sanders's platform?

In 2020, America elected Joe Biden to be not-Trump—a role for which he seemed well-suited. In 2016, the country voted for burn-it-all-down upheaval. Trump was the tribune of those who felt betrayed and misled and mistreated. Four chaotic years later, alarmed voters fled into the arms of an aging former vice-president and senator—a man they had twice rejected as a presidential contender—who seemed the personification of the steady hand.

Oops.

No one expected Biden to be transformational or extraordinary, but we did need him to be the anti-Trump in the most important ways. We needed him to be sober and responsible, to play by the rules, and to uphold the primacy of law and procedure. And he delivered. President Biden freed the country and the world from the tyranny of tweeted insults, conspiracies, threats, lies, fantasies, and reversals. And while naturally some will criticize his policies, Biden has conducted the presidency with dignity. He has gone some way toward restoring a sense that the system, whatever its flaws, is basically sound.

What do you mean, "no one"?  Didn't Mr Biden have aspirations, all along, to be "transformational," and doesn't he sound off about all the legislation he's gotten through Congress, stagflation and future road repair liabilities be damned?  Dignity?  Have you no shame, Mona Charen?  What is dignified about "Jim Eagle" or "Ultra-MAGA"?

The Presidential Sin, though, is Trump-adjacent conduct.

But the revelation that, like Trump, Biden mishandled classified documents, including storing them in his garage next to his Corvette, drags us back to precisely the world in which Trump is most comfortable. Like all reprobates, Trump’s default justification when caught out is “everybody does it.” Last summer, when the FBI executed a search of Mar-a-Lago for purloined classified documents, Trump demanded, on his social media platform Truth Social, “What happened to the 30 million pages of documents taken from the White House to Chicago by Barack Hussein Obama? He refused to give them back! What is going on? This act was strongly at odds with NARA. Will they be breaking into Obama’s ‘mansion’ in Martha’s Vineyard?” It was rubbish, as the National Archives confirmed in a statement.

In Bulwark World, dear reader, the greatest sin is riling up Trumpians.

The TV analysts who are rushing to explain that what Trump did was orders of magnitude worse than what Biden did are correct, but it will not alter the political calculus. What Biden did (so far as we know or have reason to suspect) was negligent but not intentional. And yet, it’s still way too close to Trump’s transgressions for comfort. Millions of Republicans, marinated in grievance, are primed to believe that Trump is the victim of a double standard and they won’t delve too deeply into the distinction between purposely absconding with classified material, lying about it, and defying a subpoena, and simply leaving classified documents in an office closet and in a garage.

An office closet at a university center funded inter alia by Chinese interests?  Is the "simply leaving" a symptom of dementia, which is what "senior moment" makes light of?  It's a good bet that the populist grievance industry is all over those possibilities, whilst the palace guard media and the White House staff look weak.  "It was an oversight, but as soon as it was discovered, we did things by the book."

Ms Charen's conclusion is less than inspiring.

That is demoralizing for those who believe that Biden’s chief accomplishment–and purpose–as president has been to restore a modicum of trust to a nation that has been sunk in suspicion and bitterness for too long. Being not-Trump demands better.

It came to this, Mona Charen, when, rather than suggesting voters leave the presidential ballot unticked, or vote for the Libertarian or the Free Soiler, your Bulwark lot actively backed Democrats all up and down the ballot.  Be better.  Recant your Swampy ways, and beg forgiveness.