Punishing Patterns

In writing about the serial scandals that have followed the Clintons throughout their decades in public life, Jonah Goldberg relates very wise advice:

You forgive mistakes; you punish patterns. Everybody screws up. But if someone won’t learn from his mistakes and try to correct his behavior, then he either doesn’t think it was a mistake, he just doesn’t care, or he thinks you’re a fool.

Unquestionably, this applies to Hillary's Servergate scandal and the questions surrounding political favors that have been tied to multimillion dollar donations to her charitable foundation. Her surrogates claim that honest mistakes were made. A more penetrating look sees a pattern of unethical, dishonest conduct. But hey, the Clintons never seem to get caught, and besides, there's "no smoking gun" (only lots and lots of smoke), so who am I to argue?

But the patterns don't stop with the Clintons. The Obama administration calls the revisiting of destructive, dishonest and ineffective patterns "doubling down" and thinks its a badge of honor. More honest people might suggest that behavior that stonewalls the truth (think: Fast and Furious, the VA scandal, the Benghazi scandal, the IRS scandal) or creates chaos in foreign policy, would be better to discontinue. Nope, doubling down works, as long as a compliant media allows it to. It's an ugly, unethical pattern, but hey, Obama's Team of 2s really do think they're the smartest guys in the room, so who am I to argue?

And the patterns don't stop with the administration. Now that the riots in Baltimore have begun to wane, we see the Democrats advocating a well worn pattern—spend (oops, sorry, I mean "invest") still more money on the inner cities and talk about "reform" of the justice and education system but never actually propose anything that is substantively new or different, and of course, suggest that its really all about class warfare and/or "oppression" by the "haves."  Of course trillions have been spent without good outcomes already, but the pattern is all that matters. In addition, this pattern deflects any blame or responsibility from those who are doing the rioting, suggesting that a climate of oppression has caused their actions. It's nice to be serially forgiven for criminality and violence, but hey, our guilt for errors of the past knows no bound.

To quote Goldberg: "... if someone won’t learn from his mistakes and try to correct his behavior, then he either doesn’t think it was a mistake, he just doesn’t care, or he thinks you’re a fool." Or all three. Maybe it's time for the electorate to begin "punishing patterns."