Now, if all Ryan means is: let’s beef up cybersecurity and the like, fine. But he doesn’t really say that. Instead, by seeding the discussion of the 2020 election with all this talk of Russian intelligence and ops, by fanning the political flames rather than settling for quieter, more prudential calls for better cybersecurity, I fear that he underestimates, and perhaps contributes to, the paranoia this kind of argument can generate.
In any campaign, whether the Russians are involved or not, a candidate’s compromising history will be churned up. (Remember the role Jeremiah Wright played in Obama’s campaign in 2008? Or the swift-boating of John Kerry?). In any campaign, there is the possibility of third-party candidates getting boosted by writers, activists, and the like. Once you introduce the Russia question into all this, it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between someone bringing up a candidate’s compromising history as part of normal politics and someone doing that as a Russian op.
Do we seriously want an American politics where good old-fashioned dirty pool — exposing someone’s embarrassing past — is suddenly cast as one element in the potential plot of a foreign power? That seems like not a good way to go.
