Glenn Harlan Reynolds

So I’ve made no secret of being unhappy with my choices in this presidential election, a feeling that I share with most voters, judging by the polls.

Trump is a blowhard who seems to have something of a man-crush on Vladimir Putin. His business dealings are as shady as you’d expect a New York real-estate developer’s to be, his campaign has been a madhouse, and even on the positions of his that I like, I don’t have a whole lot of confidence that he’ll actually deliver.

Hillary, on the other hand is, well, a crook. Her period at the State Department was marked by pretty much out-and-out influence peddling, the Clinton Foundation seems to be little more than a money laundry, and when she’s asked to explain herself, she sounds like a Mafia boss’s lawyer, only less believable.

I could vote third-party of course, as I have in the past, but that’s not super-appealing either. I would ordinarily lean toward the Libertarian ticket, featuring former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson and former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld, but their positions on a lot of issues I care about aren’t especially libertarian — Weld on Second Amendment rights sounds, well, like a Massachusetts governor, and Johnson seems to care more about marijuana rights than religious freedom. Besides, it’s hard to see them carrying a single state.

The quixotic candidacy of Evan McMullin, backed by some “NeverTrump” Republicans, seems even less likely to accomplish anything (except maybe keep some consultants employed). And I interviewed Green Party nominee Jill Stein last election cycle and she’s a nice lady, but her chances look even poorer, and her outright-socialist platform would be a disaster in the unlikely event she won.

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So what to do? Well, the answer to me comes from a column by Bill McGurn in the Wall Street Journal, noting that the worst scandal in Hillary’s email scandal isn’t what Hillary did — we expect her to act like a crook — but rather that the supposedly professional, nonpartisan civil service rolled over for her, and even offered cover. As McGurn writes:

Even today her former department is still resisting efforts to make public the emails she tried to hide. Groups such as Judicial Watch have done yeoman’s work in forcing the emails into the sunlight—but they have also had to get court orders to pry them out of an obstructionist State Department. It’s a disturbing pattern, and unfortunately it’s not limited to State. There have been similar questions about the integrity and professionalism of the IRS ever since the American people learned in 2013 that it was unfairly targeting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. Three years, many congressional hearings and disappearing hard drives later, there is still no evidence the IRS has ended the practice.

And the FBI and Department of Justice have seemed curiously uninterested in going after people for behavior that, in other circumstances, would be a surefire ticket to federal prison.

The reason, of course, is that the civil service, though supposedly professional and nonpartisan, has become a Democratic Party monoculture. Federal employees overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, donate to Democrats, and, by all appearances, cover for Democrats as a routine part of doing their job.

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When Richard Nixon tried to weaponize the IRS, top officials at the Service made a stink. Under Obama, the IRS weaponized itself.

And, of course, the press is in the tank for the Democrats as usual. Bad news about Obama and Clinton has been soft-pedaled, with reporters sometimes admitting that they don’t want to help Trump.

So if the choice in 2016 is between one bad candidate and another (and it is) the question is, which one will do the least harm. And, judging by the civil service’s behavior, that’s got to be Trump. If Trump tries to target his enemies with the IRS, you can bet that he’ll get a lot of pushback — and the press, instead of explaining it away, will make a huge stink. If Trump engages in influence-peddling, or abuses secrecy laws, you can bet that, even if Trump’s appointees sit atop the DOJ or FBI, the civil service will ensure that things don’t get swept under the rug. And if Trump wants to go to war, he’ll get far more scrutiny than Hillary will get — or, in cases like her disastrous Libya invasion, has gotten.

So the message is clear. If you want good government, vote for Trump — he’s the only one who will make this whole checks-and-balances thing work.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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