The tradition of ad-hoc cobbled-together investigations of politicians looking into their own misdeeds needs to be over. They can no longer be trusted to contain their factional warfare, they can no longer be trusted to act for the overall public good, if they ever could have been. “I have investigated my party’s misdeeds and I find them innocent of all accusations” should sound as ridiculous coming from the lips of a politician as from a criminal defendant’s. It works both ways: victims are not allowed to run investigations for a reason.

The historical precedent for this turning point is Robert Peel’s creation of a professional police department in London (which is why the London police are called “Bobbies.” Peel’s 9 Principles of Professional Policing is worth contemplation, especially for incarceration-happy Americans).

The FBI has a respectable record of impartiality. While that record is challenged by its handling of the HRC email scandal, in my view their decision has been historically exonerated. I propose that the FBI develop a permanent, standing Division, with its own funding line, to investigate the political class (yes, I am aware that the FBI is a subset of the Justice Department, but the Marines and the Navy have their own cultures, even though they are both under the Department of Defense). The Justice Department is too much of a political stooge to be trusted, and its handling of the email scandal should make that clear. You don’t grant prosecutorial immunity to end an investigation with no “collars.” Immunity should be used to climb the ladder to the greater criminal, unless the motivation of the Justice Department was to knock down the ladder before it could be climbed.

Now is the time window in which to build the institution: the Democrats would never have cooperated with creating such a body with Hilary Clinton as the heir-apparent. The Republicans are like the family on Thanksgiving trying to decide if drunk uncle will settle down or if they need to call the police.

The Republicans would be wise to think that Drumpf’s narcissism, ineptitude, and poor relationship with facts he does not approve of will have them off in the presidential wilderness after he is done, however that comes about (I agree with David Brooks that the odds are better than even he will not finish his term. A scandal with any traction will have the Republicans turning on him like the Praetorian Guard). Republicans would do well to remember that in this century their candidates haven’t entered the White House without eking out a victory with Electoral College alchemy and against the popular vote.

Both parties have thoroughly weaponized scandals, with the Democrats wanting new confrontations with Russia over alleged email hacks (none of the details of which are public). Drumpf bleats of illegal wire taps on his stately pleasure dome – but in this day and age of political duplicity who can really say? I thought Drumpf’s claims of CNN cheating during the debate laughable, but now Donna Brazile is a Democratic apparatchik with barely a turning of her coat.

With distortions and exaggerations abounding on all sides, Americans are hopelessly caught between pants-on-fire liars on both sides of the aisle and the intelligence apparatus (“The intelligence on Iraq is a slam dunk” – George Tenet. “Nobody is (wittingly) reading your emails.” – John Clapper. “Gadhafi will commit genocide imminently” – Hilary Clinton). This murk is as intentional and rational for the political class as the ink is for the octopus. Somehow it must be dispelled to mitigate America’s current coping strategy which is to say “Way too complex! I can’t hear anything with all the yelling and screaming! A pox on all your houses!” This results in the low expectations that vomit up fiends like Trump and Hilary Clinton. What should baffle and frustrate Americans is that there were several reasonable anti-establishment candidates on both sides of the primaries, representing a great diversity of fair-and-square, honestly debatable approaches to governance.

As I’ve written before, I fear we are headed into Pakistan-Mexico-and-Brazil territory where it is routine for the incoming party to criminalize the outgoing. Watergate does not count as a crisis, but rather as the system working as it should. Nixon should have been impeached, and the Republicans did put partisanship aside to see it done. But putting partisanship aside seems as quaint now as the men on the Titanic and “women and children first.”

The missing ingredient now is a functional political culture. The Democrats should have shown Clinton the door. With the clarity of time it is clear that in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010 fragility of confidence in government is turning into a serious issue for our Republic (libertarians would say trust in the wisdom and credibility of the government is misplaced anyway). Institutions are more important than men and Clinton was by no means indispensable; we could have spared ourselves twenty years or more years of using the word “Clintonian.” There would have been no giant bad-finger-to-all-perception Bubba helping himself to an airplane seat along Loretta Lynch, at the height of skepticism of the impartiality of the Justice Department. Al Gore is a fine man (which is not to say I agree with him) and was unlikely to have stained our national honor to a Clintonian degree. We can see in retrospect how the partisan cancer of endless “gates” and scandals has metastasized (fun fact: look into the eyes of Ben Franklin, on a hundred dollar bill, and contemplate his Mona Lisa-like bemused return, and dwell on what would have happened, had he had his Constitutional way for his proposal that an impeachment vote could be initiated just on grounds of “obnoxiousness.” No Nixon, No Drumpf. Maybe more impeachment is the remedy).

This pervasive stench of corruption, combined with consequence impotence, is deeply threatening to our political functionality. Read about a financial scandal in the housing market meltdown and chant: “And a police officer is not even allowed to accept a soda from someone!” Have this quote tattooed on the inside of your eyeballs as you read about the erupted cesspool of John Corzine, ex New Jersey governor and political “bundler” for the Democratic party. He made over a billion dollars of his investors’ money disappear, and he wound up investigated by… the Department of Agriculture! Can anyone doubt his lucre-spewing to his politicos had something to do with his exquisite treatment? Irrespective of his walking free and paying a pittance (a five million dollar fine) as a percentage of his havoc, just the appearance of it all should have Americans dancing with rage. We count the number of bullets in a criminal’s gun as criminal counts against him, yet not one bubble-bellows-fraudster involved in the financial crisis that shook the world, the earthquakes of which rattle our teeth to this day, ever went to jail. So much for rule of law for everyone.

What if there were a true threat of investigations of conflicts of interests and political misconduct? What if there was an investigative institution, with the normal subpoena power, able to use professional judgement and ethics irrespective of political time and tide? What if the institution had limited resources with which to pursue their goals, but also having the requirement that they prioritize their focus, without concern for the grinding of the partisan ax? What if an institution examined issues of motivation the same way they would in a murder investigation?

Justice must be Just, and it must be perceived to be Just.

• About the Author

About Eugene Darden Nicholas

Eugene Darden (Ed) Nicholas is from Flushing Queens, where he grew up sheltered from the hard world, learning the true things after graduating college and becoming a paramedic in Harlem. School continues to inform and entertain in all its true, Shakespearean glory. It's a lot of fun, really. In that career, dozens of people walk the earth now who would not be otherwise. (The number depends on how literally or figuratively you choose to add). He added a beloved wife to his little family, which is healthy. He is also well blessed in friends and colleagues.