Even a year ago, most of us would have thought that if the president was said to have paid $130,000 in hush money to a pornographic film actress known as Stormy Daniels, that it would be front-page news for days. But now we just shrug it off: So what else is new?

Many people have wondered why this clown should get to be president after all the exposure of his disqualifications, when far lesser offenders were punished with instantaneous dismissal. The answer is that the boss decides who gets fired, and this clown’s boss is the American voters, almost half of whom chose Mr. Trump. His employment contract has a term of four years, barring exceptional circumstances.

And one of the shocking things about the past year is the enthusiasm by Trump haters for poking around in obscure corners of the Constitution for exceptional circumstances, like the suddenly voguish language providing that, in the absence of a sitting president, power shall pass to the president’s cat, or, there being no such cat, to his or her dog, or rabbit, or son-in-law … all the way down to the vice president. Have I got that right?

During President Trump’s early months in office, the mainstream press’s coverage seemed spectacularly biased against him. Words like “lie” and “wrong” appeared in headlines about the White House. This didn’t bother me especially. After all, it was a bias I shared. It seemed to be following the British model of open bias that readers can judge and discount for themselves — a search for truth that fears not to cross an arbitrary line between facts and opinion.