One piece of advice my father always gave me was this: Never miss a funeral or a wedding. "It's important to show up at these things," he said, "And you will never regret going."
Apparently, this is not a lesson that was ever taught to Barack Obama. The White House announced Wednesday the president will not attend the Saturday funeral Mass for Justice Antonin Scalia, who died suddenly this past weekend.
Over at Public Discourse, political scientist Carson Holloway argued that Republicans should stop treating Trump's supporters as irrational. Those supporters are acting in their own interests, as they assess them, and anyone who wants to woo them should appeal to those interests. Appeal to principles will not do the job. Political realism is required. Holloway thinks that the Founders, who understood the power of interests, would have agreed.
Trump himself is, of course, unprincipled. He acts in his own interests without much regard for moral constraints or enduring or universal principles. He is uncivil, casually throwing around epithets such as "liar," "choke artist,""goofy," and "fool." He is famously sexually incontinent. He was for abortion before he was against it. And so on.
