The next president we elect needs to make us a promise on classified documents

Democrats think Donald Trump disqualified himself from being in the running for president in 2024 with his gross mishandling of classified documents.

Joe Biden needs to be held to the same standard.

That’s why Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to examine Biden’s apparent misdeeds with documents from his time as vice president found at his former office at a think tank and at his home in Delaware.

Garland did the same with respect to Trump, who had classified documents from his time in the White House in his possession at his home in Florida.

The mental gymnastics being played by partisans on the two sides on this to point fingers at one or the other guy are entertaining, if nothing else.

The partisans are bending over backwards trying to point out how one is worse than the other, when the fact of the matter is, both are awful, if only in terms of optics, and we’ll be lucky if that’s the only damage.

There’s a reason classified documents are, well, classified – to make sure that the information contained in them doesn’t get out to the wrong people.

There are plenty of wrong people, too – inimical foreign interests like Russia, China, Iran, even people representing allies who might have interest in top secret info to be able to get something to use as leverage when the situation arises.

Having documents just laying around in a golf club, in Trump’s case, or in a garage or office, in Biden’s case, is an imminent threat to our national security.

We already know that, in both cases, the former POTUS and the former veep had documents in their possession that they shouldn’t have had.

All the special counsels are going to do is determine potential criminality.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden both have exposed our nation to untold danger.

Whether it was simple carelessness or something more sinister is immaterial in the political context.

It’s ultimately up to the primary voters to decide here, of course, though it’s not like there aren’t two long lines of qualified candidates that they can choose from in 2024.

Maybe we can make sure that the candidates all have to check a box promising that they won’t stash top secret documents in their home offices or next to their Corvettes.