Call me a traditionalist.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wants Congress to enact legislation that requires presidential candidates to release their tax returns for public inspection.
With all due respect to my home boy, I think the bill is an overreach.
Wyden is responding to presumptive Republican presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his returns. Trump contends his returns are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, to which the IRS has responded “so what?”; an audit doesn’t preclude the release of the returns.
The tradition has been for presidential candidates to release their returns. They’ve been doing it since 1976, the first election after the Watergate constitutional crisis that forced President Nixon to resign.
My own sense is that tradition ought to stand.
I believe candidates’ refusal to release those returns give voters a key gauge of their character. It gives voters a chance to determine a candidate’s trustworthiness. It enables voters to use such refusal as a measuring stick as to whether the candidate deserves their ballot-box endorsement.
To be sure, Wyden has a dog in this fight. He has endorsed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in turn has been blasting Trump to smithereens over his refusal to release his tax returns.
I get Sen. Wyden’s bias.
I also believe “tradition” ought to stand as a de facto rule. Let the presidential candidates decide whether to comply … and then let voters decide on the correctness of their refusal.