“Tanking” is all the rage in the NBA. It is the calculated decision to stop pretending to compete today in order to improve tomorrow. Lose now, draft later, and pray for salvation in the lottery.


It is hard to avoid the suspicion that the American electorate has adopted a similar strategy. Our current executive, legislative, and judicial rosters show little evidence of being built to win. Perhaps, collectively, we have decided to bottom out in the standings and hope for a better draft class in some future season.


The nation’s most serious intelligence failure is not occurring in a foreign capital; it is the chronic absence of intelligence—judgment, knowledge, and expertise—among too many who hold high office. At precisely the moment when we require leaders capable of navigating artificial intelligence, climate disruption, geopolitical instability, and the inevitability of another pandemic, the bench has been cleared of the studious and the competent. In their place stand political improvisers, confidently winging it.


The much-discussed Epstein files, said to number in the millions of pages, have become a Rorschach test for institutional credibility. In the popular imagination, their handling has elevated cynicism to an Olympic sport. Watergate, once the gold standard of scandal, now risks being remembered as a procedural misdemeanor—a historical jaywalking citation.


One is tempted—half seriously, half in despair—to suggest turning the whole archive over to artificial intelligence. Let the machines do what our bureaucracies cannot: sort the evidence, connect the names, and identify conduct worthy of prosecution. It would be an ironic triumph if algorithms proved more diligent custodians of justice than the institutions designed for that purpose.

Meanwhile, scandal behaves less like a series of discrete events and more like a metastatic disease, radiating outward from Washington, weakening already fragile civic tissue. The body politic coughs politely while the infection spreads.


Political commentary, however eloquent, feels increasingly like prescribing lozenges for a structural fracture. Words—mine included—are no match for a system that rewards performance over competence and outrage over understanding.


As for last week’s congressional theatrics, one could not help but notice the Attorney General auditioning for a post-government career in the insult-comedy circuit. If the aspiration is to channel Don Rickles, the material requires sharpening and the timing considerable work. Even Mencken, patron saint of American skepticism, understood that ridicule is most effective when it is both precise and economical.


In the meantime, the republic appears committed to playing out the season with a depleted roster, a distracted coaching staff, and a fan base divided between those booing, those cheering, and those already studying next year’s draft prospects.