Is there a political virtue of ‘impartiality”?  If so, then with regard to what should we be impartial?  Could impartiality as to our country’s fate ever be right?

Distinguished author and scholar Joseph Epstein says that impartiality is what we need today.  He presents evidence of his own: he has voted for both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and in 2016 cast his ballot for someone other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

By “impartiality,” Mr. Epstein explains, he means “disinterestedness.”  This is “to be above personal interest in your views and actions, even your emotions.”  But Epstein does not mean personal pecuniary interest, by all indication, nor the acquisition of political power, since he refers to private persons such as himself.  What he means by “impartiality” or “disinterestedness” is indifference to party or ideological affiliation.  He means freedom from the passion of political partisanship.  Therefore, being open to meritorious arguments from either side is impartiality.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan exemplified impartiality, according to Epstein.  He worked for administrations of both parties (Kennedy and Nixon), and as a Democratic senator once disagreed with President Clinton on health care.  He was so admirable a politician as to be the last with whom Epstein would care to have lunch.  Luncheons among the genuinely impartial are, of course, time-consuming affairs, it being impossible to determine what looks good on the menu without assiduous scrutiny, preceded by the dismissal of predilections.

All of this brings us to Donald Trump, the arch-defiler of impartiality.  He is not that, however, because of his official actions.  Epstein actually confers mild praise on Trump’s policies (except for “his abandonment of the Kurds”).  Epstein, furthermore, rebukes those succumbing to “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”  His response to these persons, who both loathe Trump and fail to see “such clearly dubious characters as Adam Schiff and Jerrold Nadler” for what they are, is that the President, is “essentially a comic figure.”  He is ludicrous, rather than sinister.

Trump is inimical to “impartiality,” in Epstein’s view, because of the way he talks. “His every utterance is designed to make you take a stand, to love him or loathe him.”  He makes it “all but impossible to remain politically impartial.”  He causes dissension between friends and family members.  “You may agree with his policies, but his braggadocio and egotism will give you second thoughts.”

This is the President’s censorable characteristic: his manner of speech.  And yet it amusing, because Trump “uses confidence to cover ignorance and insult to combat criticism, and is touchier than a fresh burn.”  He is ludicrous, but “complicating this comic view of Trump” are his policy successes.  It is, perhaps, a little startling that the successful economic and foreign policy with which Epstein credits the President should merely qualify Epstein’s view of Trump’s deportment.  We might have expected it to be the other way around -- the conduct of the nation’s affairs is surely primary, even if complicated by a style of rhetoric.  But then, confidence, touchiness, braggadocio, and egotism do not suggest impartiality, and that, we recall, is the important thing.

Let us, however, consider impartiality.  It is the primary attribute of a judge.  A judge looks to the past -- what did or did not occur, as revealed by the evidence. Cf., Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1358b et seq.  Guilt or innocence, liability or the absence of same are his concerns, not what is advantageous or sound policy.  Fiat justitia ruat coelom (“Let justice be done though the heavens fall.”) is the maxim of jurisprudence.  Between the possible alternative outcomes of a case the judge is impartial -- only the evidence and the law decide, not the judge’s preference for a particular outcome, not his affinity or disaffinity for either of the litigants.  A trial judge is indifferent to the result, provided that it is attained by adherence to a mandated procedure.

Politics, on the other hand, looks forward.  It is concerned with what is advantageous or disadvantageous for the nation -- in extreme circumstances, for what preserves or destroys it.  It requires a certain clear-sightedness, sometimes called practical wisdom, undergirded by a moral quality called moderation.  It is that quality which, indeed, makes possible contemplation of the merit even in the arguments of one’s adversary, if such merit exists.

Indifference to the result in any portentous political controversy, on the other hand, can never denote virtue.  The love of one’s country and its constitution render impossible disinterested contemplation of their survival or demise.  Furthermore, getting the citizens to take a side in issues affecting the wellbeing of the nation inheres in statesmanship.  What does Epstein think Lincoln was doing with respect to the expansion of slavery during the years culminating in his presidency?

Epstein looks askance upon politics.  It “does not generally bring out the best in everybody.” Politics, it seems, entails conflict.  “It narrows the lens of understanding, sets people against one another, is more interested in victory than truth.”  He cites Aristotle (the Ethics) for the proposition that ‘the end of politics is happiness or the good life” and laments that it has brought neither to our people “in recent times.”  What we lack is “impartiality[,]…the only hope for negotiating the personal traps and public potholes of politics.”

Epstein must also be aware of Aristotle’s more famous observation from the Politics that man is a political animal, whose perfection depends upon living in a country.  The country is formed with certain moral precepts that comprise its “regime” (constitution, system of government, or way of life). Being human, we must have politics.

The American system of government is representative republicanism, with protection of the rights of the minority.  It is defined in the Constitution and judicial decisions interpreting it, and is now in mortal danger.

There is an attempt to overturn the result of the last presidential election by impeachment, on the most spurious grounds and by the most unfair of procedures.  The Speaker of the House now wishes to control the manner of trial in the Senate.  There was apparently a conspiracy among federal law enforcement and intelligence officials to thwart and incriminate the successful presidential candidate in the 2016 election.  There is an overt campaign to overturn the first two Amendments contained in the Bill of Rights, to do away with the Electoral College, to end equal representation of the states in the Senate, and to eviscerate the independence of the judiciary by packing the Supreme Court.  Physical intimidation against conservative journalists, members of the Trump Administration, and those charged with enforcing the immigration laws is commonplace and tolerated by local authorities.

These are not potholes, and no defender of American constitutionalism can be impartial as to their effect.  Those who make a display of their detachment from the struggle that now grips America and proclaim their scrupulous consistency in condemning both sides engage in an (apparently inadvertent) self-parody.  Let them spread their plumage and parade around after the danger of national ruin is past.