It’s not the ‘locker room’ talk; it is the ‘lock her up’ talk

The second presidential debate – bloody, muddy and raucous – was just enough to save Donald Trump’s campaign from extinction, but not enough to restore his chances of winning, barring an act of God (a medical calamity) or of Vladimir Putin (a cosmically incriminating WikiLeak).

That Trump crashed because of a sex-talk tape is odd. It should have been a surprise to no one. His views on women have been on display for years.

And he’d offered a dazzling array of other reasons for disqualification: habitual mendacity, pathological narcissism, profound ignorance and an astonishing dearth of basic human empathy.

To which list Trump added in the second debate, and it had nothing to do with sex. It was his threat, if elected, to put Hillary Clinton in jail.

After appointing a special prosecutor, of course. The niceties must be observed. First, a fair trial, then a proper hanging.

The day after the debate at a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump responded to chants of “lock her up,” with “Lock her up is right.” Two days later, he told a rally in Lakeland, Fla., “She has to go to jail.”

Such incendiary talk is an affront to elementary democratic decency and a breach of the boundaries of American political discourse.

In democracies, the electoral process is a subtle and elaborate substitute for combat, the age-old way of settling struggles for power. But that sublimation only works if there is mutual agreement to accept both the legitimacy of the result (which Trump keeps undermining with charges that the very process is “rigged”) and the boundaries of the contest.

The prize for the winner is temporary accession to limited political power, not the satisfaction of vendettas. Putin, Hugo Chavez and a cavalcade of two-bit caudillos lock up their opponents. American leaders don’t.

One doesn’t even talk like this. It takes decades, centuries, to develop ingrained norms of political restraint and self-control. But they can be undone in short order by a demagogue feeding a vengeful populism.

Conservatives have relentlessly, and correctly, criticized this administration for abusing its power and suborning the civil administration (e.g., the IRS). Is the Republican response to do the same?

This election is not just about placing the nuclear codes in Trump’s hands. It’s also about handing him the instruments of civilian coercion.

Think of what Trump could do to enforce the “fairness” he demands. Imagine giving over the vast power of the modern state to a man who says in advance that he will punish his critics and jail his opponent.

This story was originally published October 14, 2016 at 6:20 PM with the headline "It’s not the ‘locker room’ talk; it is the ‘lock her up’ talk."