Don’t assume Pam Bondi’s replacement will be worse. Demand better | Opinion

There’s a particular form of reasoning that’s become so common in American politics it barely registers anymore. It goes like this: Yes, the person in power did something wrong, but the next person’s gonna be worse, so we should be grateful for what we had.

David Mastio deployed this argument in his recent column about Pam Bondi’s firing as U.S. attorney general. His thesis was blunt: Bondi broke the law, took orders through a social media app, purged FBI agents and lied to federal judges — but she was the best we could expect get from this president. Her successor, he warned, will be worse.

The problem’s not that the prediction’s implausible. It might even be correct. The problem’s that it can never be wrong. No matter who holds the office next, the argument reloads: That person’s bad, but wait till you see what comes after. It’s an excuse with no expiration date, and it’s been doing steady work in American commentary for the better part of a decade.

When the standard for acceptable conduct is “not as bad as what’s coming,” there’s no floor. Every violation becomes tolerable in hindsight the moment a worse one follows it. The effect isn’t insight. It’s the normalization of decline, dressed up as sophistication.

Mastio’s column catalogs serious offenses. Bondi’s Justice Department defied court orders on deportations, dropped more than 23,000 criminal cases — including over 1,300 involving terrorism — and pursued politically motivated prosecutions that judges quickly rejected. These aren’t footnotes. They represent a fundamental breakdown in the rule of law at the one institution Americans depend on to enforce it.

To look at that record and conclude that our takeaway should be to appreciate her while you could is to mistake resignation for analysis. It asks readers to absorb the damage without demanding accountability for it, because accountability’s been rendered pointless by the certainty that things will get worse.

This isn’t realism. It’s learned helplessness.

The more useful question’s not whether Bondi’s replacement’ll be worse. It’s why we’ve accepted a framework in which each successive attorney general is measured not against the oath of office but against the last person who failed to honor it. When did “less lawless than the next appointee” become a passing grade for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer?

Americans who still believe the Justice Department exists to serve the law and not the president don’t need to be told to brace for worse. They need to be told that the standard hasn’t changed, even if the people meeting it have. Grading on a collapsing curve isn’t wisdom. It’s surrender.

Ray Watford is a retired newspaper production director who worked for publications in Florida, New England, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia.