Principles? Who Needs Stinking Principles?

Not a lot of pols ... and not a lot of the people who vote for them.

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If you want to know just how unprincipled — and how unabashedly hypocritical — politicians and their supporters can be, consider how Democrats would respond if Graham Platner were a Republican.

Platner, the Maine Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, has spent weeks answering questions about his past. By now, you probably know at least some of the story. During what he describes as a dark period in his life after military service, he had a Nazi tattoo emblazoned on his chest — for nearly two decades. He has acknowledged inappropriate relationships with women. He has made insulting comments about military heroes and said things about Black Americans that, at the very least, demonstrated remarkably poor judgment.

Now ask yourself a simple question: What would Democrats be saying if Graham Platner were a Republican?

Would they call him a Nazi? Of course they would. Democrats routinely compare Donald Trump to Nazis, and Trump never had a Totenkopf tattoo on his body. They would call him a misogynist, a racist, and a walking example of toxic masculinity. Cable news panels would discuss his unfitness for office. Editorial writers would write about how he represented a threat to American values.

Maybe some of those criticisms would be justified. That’s not the point.

The point is that more than 70 percent of Democratic primary voters in Maine chose Platner to be their party’s Senate nominee. They had alternatives. They knew the controversies. And they voted for him anyway.

That’s their right. In a democracy, voters get to make their own choices.

But once they do, they lose some credibility when they lecture Republicans about character.

Consider Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who recently defeated longtime Senator John Cornyn to become the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Paxton could open up a Samsonite outlet store with all the baggage he’s accumulated. Over the years he has faced allegations involving bribery, infidelity, fraud, and abuse of office. He was indicted on felony securities-fraud charges and later impeached by the Texas House, only to survive conviction in the state Senate.

Yet Republican voters chose him anyway — over a decent, arguably more qualified man who said he voted for Donald Trump 99 percent of the time — but apparently wasn’t sufficiently loyal to the president.

Which means that Republicans who support Paxton have a difficult time arguing that Graham Platner is unfit for public office. And Democrats who support Platner have a difficult time arguing that Paxton’s ethical problems should automatically disqualify him.

What we’re seeing is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem. It’s an American political problem.

And like so many political developments over the last decade, it leads us back to — yes — Donald Trump.

Not because Trump invented hypocrisy. Politicians were hypocrites long before Donald Trump rode down the escalator. But Trump accelerated a trend that was already underway. He proved that large numbers of voters were willing to overlook almost anything if they believed their candidate would fight hard enough against the other side.

As New York Times columnist David French recently observed, “Trump’s influence has spread beyond Trump’s base. By lowering the bar of acceptable behavior below the floor of normal decency, he’s made a mockery of the idea that character matters in politics. What value is there in being a virtual loser?”

So why should Democrats in Maine hold their candidate to a higher standard? Why should Republicans in Texas? Why should either side voluntarily disarm when the other team clearly isn’t planning to?

The result is a political culture in which really, really bad behavior is no longer disqualifying. It’s merely inconvenient. Character flaws aren’t reasons to reject a candidate; they’re talking points to be explained away. Every scandal comes with a ready-made defense: What about your side? You don’t have clean hands so why should we?

And that brings us to the people who get off easiest in these discussions: the voters.

Politicians respond to incentives. If voters reward bad behavior, politicians will continue behaving badly. That’s not cynicism; it’s human nature.

Too often, voters act like what used to matter no longer matters. Integrity? Honesty? Decency? Those are nice qualities, but they’re apparently optional. What really matters is defeating the other side. Winning has become the highest political virtue.

In Watergate days, prosecutors used the phrase “un-indicted co-conspirator.” In today’s politics, that description sometimes fits the electorate, the voters who we’re not supposed to blame because, you know, they’re just ordinary Americans — and no one wants to take pot shots at ordinary Americans.

We complain about the quality of our leaders while repeatedly rewarding the very conduct we claim to despise.

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but when we tolerate bad behavior, we shouldn’t be surprised when we get more of it.

The truth is that politicians didn’t lower the standards by themselves. They had help — from us. We excused, rationalized, overlooked, and defended. We decided that character mattered right up until the moment it became inconvenient.

Which is why that famous line from Pogo remains as relevant today as when it was first written:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

The uncomfortable part is that Pogo wasn’t talking about Democrats or Republicans. He wasn’t talking about Graham Platner or Ken Paxton — or Donald Trump.

He was talking about … us.