Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist

Democrats have lost another issue. They had hoped to tie President Trump to “ungentlemanly behavior” at the late Jeffrey Epstein’s “Love Island,” but no less a character witness than Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s procurer of underage girls and young women, has told Justice Department interviewers from prison that Trump always acted appropriately in her presence.

Some Democrats had been accusing Trump of using National Guard troops to reduce crime in Washington, D.C., to distract from the Epstein issue. They will now have to move onto something else after numerous failures to smear him.

The president takes credit for what he says is the virtual elimination of crime in D.C. He has suggested Chicago may be the next target for federal troops with possibly more cities run by Democrats and harmed by out-of-control crime to follow.

There are at least three responses to this. First, federal troops have no business patrolling and policing American cities and people. Second, voters who elect the mayors and in some cases district attorneys and judges who seem more on the side of criminals than their victims got what they deserve. Third, crime will virtually disappear in D.C. and other cities if there is no cash bail, district attorneys who reduce serious offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, sanctuary cities that protect violent criminals and other efforts to falsely claim crime is down. If all of this is done and crime is still a problem, then send in the troops, at least temporarily. I’m for number three.

However, troops can only serve as a pause button. Numerous studies dating back to the famous report on what was called in the language of that day “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” by then-Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, have repeatedly exposed the roots of crime among minorities in urban areas. Sadly, these are mostly the perpetrators and the victims of crime.

From the report Moynihan prepared for President Lyndon Johnson: “The gap between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening. The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure. The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated.”

Johnson responded, as most Democrats do, by throwing money at the problem through what he called “The Great Society.” It solved little as crime and poverty continued. Democrats remain opposed to policies like school choice (which is spreading anyway) that would give especially minority children trapped in underperforming schools an opportunity to receive a real education and a start toward a good life.

Back to the main problem and the solution. According to America First Policy Institute “The United States has the highest rate of children in single-parent households of any nation in the world. There are over 18 million fatherless children in the U.S. Fathers are absent from approximately 80% of single-parent homes. Fatherless families are 4x more likely to live in poverty than that for married-couple families. Fatherless children are more likely to abuse drugs and show signs of delinquent behavior.”

Inoculating young people with what used to be called “the fear of God,” rather than the fear of troops, might also work to reduce crime.

Richard Nixon rode a “tough on crime” strategy to the presidency, but it didn’t last because he, too, could not re-build the family from the White House. While President Trump’s intervention in major cities may put a patch on the crime problem, little is likely to change when the troops are removed.

I have quoted her many times (and she thanked me for keeping it alive), but the late First Lady Barbara Bush was correct when she said: “Your success as a family … our success as a nation … depends not on what happens inside the White House, but on what happens inside your house.”

No politician or troops can make that happen.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (HumanixBooks).