Lack of action is a major misstep

Last week’s events in Helsinki still have heads spinning.

There’s so much to unpack, so much to digest, it can be overwhelming.

The Trump-Putin press conference by itself is going to be providing fodder for historians for decades.

But for now, we’ll focus on three points.

First, there’s the matter of false equivalence.

In his remarks at the summit, President Trump seemed to excuse or explain away Russian meddling in the 2016 election by saying “foolish things” were done by both the U.S. and Russia.

But there’s a huge difference that cannot be dismissed.

U.S. policy, dating back to the Cold War, has been to encourage, wherever possible, nascent democratic institutions. That moved to the forefront of policy objectives after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Efforts were made across a broad spectrum to encourage transparency, democracy and independent media. That translated into everything from nurturing western-looking politicians to providing logistical support to independent journalists.

Essentially, it was an exercise in education, trying to pass along the values and principles upon which this country is based.

The Russians, meanwhile, have been actively involved in subverting those same values and principles.

Making the most of the anonymity afforded by the internet, the Russian military did its best to undermine the credibility of American elections, distort debate, foster extremism and steer voters in a particular direction deemed favorable to the Russian government.

In other words, while U.S. policy was an exercise in education, Russian policy was an exercise in propaganda.

For President Trump to equate the two was both ignorant and offensive.

Second, there’s the matter of the disconnect between the president’s rosy assessment of U.S.-Russia relations and the assessment of the American intelligence community.

On that, we’ll agree with Rep. Jim Banks and trust the judgment of fellow Hoosier Dan Coats.

Now the director of national security, Coats represented this chunk of Indiana in the House and the entire state in the Senate. In other words, he’s someone we know and someone we trust.

And he says this country is now under attack via cyber warfare by the military of Vladimir Putin. There’s nothing rosy about that.

All of which brings us to number three: Why aren’t we responding to that attack?

Why is the Trump administration so sanguine and laid-back about this in the face of undisputed evidence of Russian election meddling and efforts to subvert American institutions?

The president himself has acknowledged the meddling, yet there’s been no effort to combat it, to counterattack or even to begin to sit down and come up with a strategy.

By even the simplest standard, that amounts to dereliction of duty. And it’s only a short hop from there to something far more damning. — J.R.