Republicans, if you think indictment is a reason to vote Trump, you’ve got it backwards | Opinion

The federal charges reportedly issued against Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents will probably help him politically in the short run.

Many Republicans will rally to him, saying the only cure for the rot that allows the Biden administration to indict the president’s most significant political opponent is to elect Trump and have him clean house.

But they have it exactly backwards: To fix what ails the federal government, Republicans must nominate almost anyone but Trump.

We don’t know exactly what Trump is accused of yet, and he, like anyone, is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Until we see the charges, we can only speculate how much of this Trump brought on himself vs. how much is the “deep state” in action. (Bet the house that Trump made a relatively small mess worse.) But if these kinds of unprecedented charges are hanging over him, he’s got too much baggage to be the Republican nominee in 2024.

A person under federal indictment will not be elected president, period. Every Republican in the country could vote for him, but independents would swing hard enough to Biden (or any one else his party puts up) that Democrats would sweep federal elections in 2024.

It’s just too much drama.

So, if Republicans really want to clean up the mess they perceive and to ensure that the criminalization of politics stops, they need someone else to make the case.

The other reality GOP voters must face is that even if you think the treatment of Trump is unfair to an unprecedented extreme, nothing in his history or demeanor suggests he would effectively follow through on any sweeping change in Washington.

He doesn’t have the focus and discipline. Consider his rash firing of FBI Director James Comey and all the fallout that followed. Did Trump have a plan for any of that? Clearly not.

And he’s incapable of hiring savvy people and letting them do the work. At this point, how many grade-A performers who know how to slice through the bureaucracy would subject themselves to working for him? By the end of just four years in office, he was on his fourth chief of staff. He’d burned through two veteran attorneys general.

Turns out the man famous for the TV catchphrase “you’re fired” is a terrible boss.

The constant drumbeat of “threats” to our democracy in recent years has been completely overblown. But this one is, in fact, a dangerous moment. To have an administration prosecuting the president’s chief political opponent and to have a leading presidential contender charged with serious crimes is a volatile situation that could roil the country.

Republican voters have the best chance to lead us out of this, simply by picking one of several capable candidates they have. For the sake of the nation — and the causes they care about — they should take it.