I wrote two books which essentially broke down players’ qualifications for the baseball Hall of Fame. I went through a number of different tests and statistical gymnastics to determine whether particular players were a good fit. One of those tests is what has often been called the Player A and B test. I certainly didn’t invent it. I couldn’t tell you who did, but it has come in handy more than a few times. Essentially, you simply look at two players’ numbers and remove their name. From there, it becomes pretty easy to figure out which player was the better player.

Baseball is a peculiar sport where numbers become sacrosanct. Spit out enough numbers and most of us could identify the player anyway. However, the methodology is important. We develop emotional attachment to guys in a positive or negative way. If we can remove that emotion we can make better decisions with the ballot and we can make better arguments in the sports bar.

WWHG stands for What would Hillary Get. Hillary is no longer relevant in our politics. At least she shouldn’t be. She will never run for public office again and so she should not be particularly relevant. Of course, certain people will try to keep her relevant for their own purposes. For our own sanity, you can replace her with whoever you want. Essentially, we can turn our politics into a Player A and B test.

So, when we consider what to do with ex-presidents we can ask the simple question: what would Hillary get? If she (or Bill) had brought home boxes of confidential documents and stored it in their attic what would happen to them? Even more important than what would happen to them is the question of what should happen to them? What would you argue for?

Obviously, this is where the concept of “but the emails…” will come up. Let’s keep in mind, the FBI not only investigated that multiple times but announced less than a week before the election that they were still investigating. Nothing came of it because it was determined that she did not have any secret or sensitive information that she shouldn’t have had on the private server. Was that the right ruling? I’m not an expert on email servers or confidential documents. However, we can easily apply the same test in reverse.

Our politics has become so tribal that we reflexively defend or accuse based on which team we play for. Criminalizing politics has always been distasteful for that reason. However, sometimes you have to do it in order to protect the sanctity of our nation. WWHG needs to plastered on every billboard. We need those rubber wristbands. Some people need it tattooed on their chest. If you are willing to excuse a guy taking home boxes full of sensitive documents that he had no legal right to then you better be ready to excuse the same for those on the other side.

The late 1990s were difficult times for Democrats and progressives. It was soul searching time for me in those days. The president of the United States became only the second president to ever be impeached. There were numerous defenses for the president and his behavior. Most of those defenses were permutations of the same defense. Essentially they said that what a man (or woman) does in their personal life does not impact them in their professional life. As long as Bill Clinton was a good president from nine to five then what does matter that he isn’t a good man after those hours?

French president Jacques Chirac famously had multiple affairs. The joke was that he kept replacing each significant other with the same woman ten years younger. If the French people accepted him as their leader then we should have accepted Clinton as our leader. As we know, that argument won out. Except, it really didn’t win out. It helped Bush win the election over Al Gore. I ended up voting for Gore because he was a different man and an infinitely better one than Clinton. However, there were millions that punished him for the mistakes of his former boss.

We often have difficulty separating a message from the messenger. It’s one of the important things I point out when teaching Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. One of the steps he mentions before a direct action campaign is self-purification. It’s a challenging concept for students. Yet, it is absolutely crucial. Listening to someone like Newt Gingrich (at the time) prattle on about character is hilarious. However, it doesn’t mean the point is wrong.

If we have learned anything over the last seven or eight years it is that personal character is absolutely a big deal. We just endured a presidency of someone that has no character. We saw what happened. We saw how that spilled into everything. We saw the abject cruelty. We saw the inhumanity and indifference. We saw the lack of a fundamental understanding and empathy.

Whether this inhumanity is merely a reflection of the people that supported him or whether his inhumanity rubbed off on them is hard to parse. His grotesque existence brings forth any number of questions. However, the most important one is whether those that support him really reflect his inhumanity or if they support him simply because that inhumanity bothers us. Either is equally likely. One might ask what the difference is and I suppose it is a minor detail, but it tells me that in one case there are millions of sociopaths/psychopaths out there. In the other case, they have human empathy, sympathy, and concern in most situations, but just enjoy the political nihilism.

Humanity itself is a fragile thing. Everyone we encounter in our lives is flawed. Look at us in the perfect angle and we can be angels or demons. Both of things make us human. We are walking contradictions and so choosing any one to lead us can seem like an impossible task. The former guy may be human in the purest scientific sense, but lacks any redeeming human traits. Such a statement seems impossible and yet objectively true. There isn’t a positive human trait there. Some of us thought those things weren’t necessary to lead. They were absolutely wrong.