Longing for when presidents were gracious winners

You remember Sally Yates, right? She is the former deputy U.S. attorney general fired by Donald J. Trump because she wouldn’t enforce the president’s ban on Muslims seeking to enter the country.

She’s now speaking out against the president’s insistence that the Justice Department investigate Hillary Rodham Clinton. For what is not entirely clear. The president just keeps hammering at and yammering about Clinton.

Yates wrote this in a tweet, according to The Hill: “DOJ not a tool for POTUS to use to go after his enemies and protect his friends,” Yates said in a tweet Saturday. “Respect rule of law and DOJ professionals. This must stop.”

Oh, how I long for the days when presidents won elections, got about the business of governing, said a good word about their opponents and then let bygones be bygones … even after tough and bruising political campaigns.

Donald Trump isn’t wired that way. In fact, he is not wired to govern effectively, to assume the office of the presidency with grace and dignity. Oh no. He’s wired instead to keep up the battle. He wants to re-litigate an election he won. He wants to keep smearing his opponents’ faces in the fact that he won an Electoral College victory.

There once was a time when presidents didn’t obsess over past battles — particularly those they won. They instead looked ahead exclusively to the myriad challenges that lay before them.

Not Trump. He said in a radio interview: “The saddest thing is, because I’m the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved in the Justice Department. I am not supposed to be involved in the FBI. I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things that I would love to be doing and I’m very frustrated by it.”

Uh, Mr. President? You are the president of the United States. You have the power to do whatever you want — within the law and the U.S. Constitution. If you choose to move away from the 2016 election — which you won! — then just do so.

Dammit!