In Washington these days, it's always the 'Children's Hour'

Every afternoon when he was president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used to invite his staff into his office for martinis. The consensus was that he wasn't very good at making martinis, but nobody wanted to tell him that. This informal time with his staff, which he called "the Children's Hour," was important to him more because of the people there than because of what they were drinking. And they felt the same way about the chance to spend some "down time" with the boss.

Today, though, the phrase "the Children's Hour" has a much different connotation when it comes to Washington and its inmates. The childish partisanship which has beset our nation's leadership for decades is a distraction and an embarrassment. The election of a president whose personal quirks include a childish, petulant need to lash out savagely at anyone who criticizes or even disagrees with him has turned the nation's capital into something even more resembling a huge Kindergarten whose teacher has stepped out for a moment than usual. Whether it's misrepresenting a statement by a foreign leader, spreading blatant untruths about his own record and accomplishments, or abusing his own cabinet officers in terms which ought to cause any human being with an ounce of self-respect to resign, the childish tantrums of the President of the United States accomplish very little other than further undermining the world's confidence in his psychological stability and making the nation's problems worse rather than better.

Mr. President, with all due respect, you just have to learn to shut up.

The unproven and unprovable accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh are no real threat to his confirmation- or shouldn't be. But with his usual talent for opening his mouth and making a mild irritation into a major crisis, President Trump has done what he always does when someone does something he disagrees with: launched into a personal attack against Kavanaugh's accuser, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. And at least some Republicans seem to believe- reasonably- that Mr. Trump's nastiness might provoke sympathy for Dr. Ford and backfire.

In fact, it might be reasonable to wonder whether Mr. Trump's mouth might not be a bigger threat to Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation than Dr. Ford's accusation.

And as usual, the Democrats are seeing Mr. Trump's childishness and going him one better. Kavanaugh will no doubt be confirmed and sitting on the Supreme Court by the time the next Congress takes office. But the Democrats are vowing to reopen the matter should they take control of either House of Congress in November if they're not satisfied that the almost certain dead end of an investigation of an incident which comes down to one person's word against another's has been duly pursued in the meantime.

Sometimes- no, usually, these days- I feel the urge to tell both Mr. Trump and Democratic leaders that they need to take a time-out. Remember when it was at least possible to pretend that the United States was governed by grownups?

We deserve better than the continuous partisan game of "gotcha" which has become the warp and woof of American politics. But that's all we're going to get, until and unless we demand better.