"Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben..."

In the '60s, a television show called Ben Casey was all the rage.  Its title character was a darkly handsome neurosurgeon played by Vince Edwards. His supervisor/mentor was an older and wiser man named Dr. Zorba, played by Sam Jaffe.

In episode after episode, the righteously indignant and passionate Dr. Casey would be on the verge of doing something impulsive or unwise when Dr. Zorba would take him aside, shake his head sadly, and say, "Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben..." My younger sister did an impression of Dr. Zorba delivering that line that never failed to crack me up.

Ben Shapiro is one of the sharpest knives in our national drawer. Originally an opponent of Donald Trump, and still something of a critic, he has morphed into what he calls "Sometimes Trump."

Fair enough. I, too, approve of the Gorsuch and, yes, the Kavanaugh appointments. I like the fact that the Federal judiciary is becoming a judiciary again instead of a standing and unelected Constitutional convention. While the USMCA isn't nearly as decisively better a deal for the United States than NAFTA was, it is a better deal, and President Trump deserves credit for it.

The current economy is more Barack Obama's doing than Donald Trump's, as any graph of employment and economic growth over the past twelve years will clearly show, but Mr. Trump's elimination of excessive regulations has undoubtedly contributed to our current prosperity. I believe that the downside of having Donald Trump as our president- the destruction of our alliances, the shrinking of America's influence in the world, the legitimization of some of the ugliest and frankly idiotic political tendencies among us, an administration which not only encourages division and alienation between Americans and a polarization which has become so deep that we no longer can even communicate one another but depends on it for its very existence, government by bullying and demagoguery and kleptocracy, the dangers posed by an emotionally immature, erratic, and deeply authoritarian president who is ignorant of history, economics, and geopolitics to the point of being essentially clueless and who is liable to do or to say almost anything at any moment, and perhaps most of all the degree to which the Gospel is being compromised by the often fanatical allegiance of evangelicals and other conservative Christians to a deeply corrupt, dishonest, and mean-spirited man who in so many ways stands for the opposite of what Jesus stands for-  not only outweighs the good Mr. Trump has done by a wide margin but has done permanent damage to the nation, as well as to the cause of Christianity. We will never know how many people the identification of Donald Trump with Jesus Christ has driven away from the Savior, and how many souls will be lost because of it. Nevertheless, I, am willing to give Mr. Trump credit when I see credit as being due him. It's just that I don't see it as being due quite as often as Ben Shapiro does. He's "Sometimes Trump;" I'm "Seldom Trump."

I just watched some of the latest Shapiro podcast. He remains critical of Trump. But alas, the instinct which has so overpowered the judgment of so many intelligent and reputable conservatives to "stick it to the libs" seems to have compromised Shapiro's judgment, too.

He kept repeating that Mr. Trump's defense at the impeachment trial should have been essentially Bill Clinton's- that yeah, what happened was wrong, but that it isn't impeachable. He kept saying that over and over. I'm guessing that he buys Alan Dershowitz's bizarre argument- which falls apart the moment one reads the Federalist Papers seeking guidance as to the intent of the Founding Fathers in and completely dissolves in the face of overwhelming precedent- that something somehow has to be a violation of the law to be impeachable.

But such has never been the case. Federal judges have been impeached for being drunk while on the bench. Dershowitz is not a constitutional lawyer and the overwhelming majority of those who are constitutional lawyers consider his argument to be nonsense both in terms of the Founders' intent and in terms of history.

The whole thing becomes even more puzzling when one recalls that the GAO has found that in withholding the aid from Ukraine, Mr. Trump did violate the law! The argument is not only absurd legally and historically, but it doesn't even apply!

But then things got even weirder. Shapiro showed Dershowitz making a powerful case for a large and rather smelly red herring: that there is nothing wrong with foreign policy dealings with another country involving a quid pro quo, and that in fact, it happens all the time. 

I'm sorry, but I find it hard to believe that either of the gentlemen, being very bright guys, actually think that the problem is that Mr. Trump's conversation with President Zelensky involved a quid pro quo. Of course, diplomatic negotiations nearly always involve a quid pro quo; one nation does something, and another does something else in return. And of course, there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is the nature of the quid pro quo in this particular case.

Both gentlemen kept saying that quid pro quos are normal and perfectly proper in conducting foreign policy. But I can't for the life of me understand how two such intelligent men can miss the critical point: that this wasn't the conduct of foreign policy!

Shapiro tried to draw an absurd parallel between President Obama telling then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev that we wanted to wait until after the 2012 election to negotiate an arms deal because he would have more room to maneuver then politically and Mr. Trump illegally withholding military aid to Ukraine to blackmail President Zelensky not simply to investigate allegations involving Hunter Biden which had already been discredited and which there was no particular reason to reopen, but-  and here is a key point- to publicly announce that Ukraine was opening an investigation of Hunter Biden!

In one case, you have a president telling a foreign leader that he wanted to delay negotiations until it would be pragmatically easier for him to negotiate a deal he believed would be in America's interest, and in the other, a president illegally withholding funds from an ally to blackmail it, not to investigate possible corruption, but to embarrass a personal political opponent of the president by announcing such an investigation!

That was the nature of the quid pro quo. This wasn't even primarily about investigating Hunter Biden or potential wrongdoing. It was about the public announcement and the political damage it would do to Mr. Trump's likely 2020 opponent.

In one case, a president pragmatically delays a negotiation because he believed- rightly or wrongly- that doing so would enable him to reach an agreement that would better serve the nation's interest. In the other case, we have a president breaking the law by withholding military aid to an ally to receive as the quid pro quo, not a concession which would be in America's interest, but the besmirching of the name of a personal political opponent!

I'll say it again: the quid pro quo wasn't an investigation of Hunter Biden. It was Ukraine announcing an investigation of Hunter Biden, to damage Joe Biden's candidacy.

This was not the conduct of foreign policy at all. It was the illegal withholding of aid to Ukraine to pressure it into making an announcement whose only impact would be to damage Mr. Trump's own probable 2020 opponent and would serve absolutely no foreign policy objective whatsoever!

Ben Shapiro is a very smart man. Alan Dershowitz is a very smart man. It's impossible to avoid the conclusion that both of them are being disingenuous. Negotiating with a foreign government and obtaining a quid pro quo that could benefit our nation is conducting foreign policy. Breaking the law to blackmail an ally into making an announcement that would embarrass a personal political opponent is simply not, and the difference is not a subtle one. And I find it hard to believe that Shapiro and Dershowitz don't realize it.

It's the same old story. I remember reading about a time when the late William F. Buckley told a guest on Firing Line, "I won't insult your intelligence by accepting that you actually believe that." And that's the position I keep finding myself in when encountering intelligent Trump supporters who profess to believe things that are not only obviously untrue, but clearly ridiculous. One such person once accused me of being uncharitable toward those who disagree with me politically. But situations like this one don't leave many options open.

If you know that a person isn't taking an obviously ridiculous position because he or she is stupid, and they stubbornly persist even in the face of overwhelming evidence, it's not a question of charity or a lack thereof. What alternative explanation remains that such a person is being intellectually dishonest?

How else to account for such a thing if not by that person placing a higher value on "sticking it to the libs" than on truth and, yes, the national interest?

What else can one do but shake his head like Dr. Zorba and say, "Oh, Ben, Ben, Ben..."