I came to your house with a gun. At least imagine I did. I tied you to a chair, took a step back and repeatedly fired. But my arm twitched; every bullet missed. Meanwhile, you slipped your knots and fled.

By the reasoning of Representative Jim Jordan, I did absolutely nothing wrong.

You’re alive! Not a drop of blood on you! An unconsummated crime is no crime at all, or so Jordan, one of the Republican Party’s more rococo philosophers, argued on Wednesday in defense of President Trump. Ukraine got its military aid; Trump did not get his investigation of the Bidens. To Jordan, that’s proof of innocence.

To a normal person, that’s proof of incompetence, which doesn’t exonerate the president but should definitely reassure us. Trump’s an autocrat all right, but the silver lining is that he’s an inept one. All strongmen should be this weak.

And all of us should have the mental limberness and ethical elasticity that Jordan and his troupe possess. They’re the Cirque du Soleil of c’est la vie. I’ve never seen anything like the Republican effort to defend Trump, which charts the frontiers of creativity, explores the outer limits of audacity, mutates like the monsters in the “Alien” movies and restores my faith in American ingenuity.