On Lenin – The Economist:

‘What has changed since the time of Watergate? Not the law. Then as now, the Supreme Court recognised that the president had “unrestricted power” to remove top officials, and that the executive branch had “exclusive authority and absolute discretion” to decide what cases to prosecute. What has changed, profoundly, is America’s political culture.
At least two of the prosecutors who resigned were, like Richardson, Republicans with admirable records of public service. Danielle Sassoon, the acting us attorney for the Southern District of New York, was first to make a dignified, principled exit, after dismantling Mr Bove’s arguments and writing she could not “in good faith defend” his position. A member of the Federalist Society, Ms Sassoon had clerked for conservative luminaries, including Justice Antonin Scalia. Next to resign was another prosecutor on the case, Hagan Scotten, a former clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts and a Special Forces veteran who was awarded two Bronze stars. While noting he was no critic of the Trump administration, Mr Scotten wrote to Mr Bove, “No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”’

(…)

‘Mr Vought appears to regard this as necessary because of a “Marxist takeover” of the government. It is a curious inversion, or projection: Vladimir Lenin rejected the idea of an apolitical civil service, and the Bolsheviks built a one-party state that prized loyalty over merit and individual scruples. Over the long haul, this approach is not likely to work out for America, either.’

Read the article here.

In the long run Trump won’t be a Lenin.

Loyalty first, merit or scruples last.

Well, the Soviet-Union lasted a few decades. And not long after that we got Yeltsin and then Putin.

We will see how long the present king and all his subordinates will last. More than four years I’m afraid, but sometimes history has pleasant surprises for you in the making.