BARRING A truly extraordinary turn of events, the seemingly endless presidential primary season will conclude Tuesday night with Hillary Clinton as the presumptive Democratic nominee. She and her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), deserve credit for competing largely on issues rather than insults. From here, she will have to contend with a Republican opponent, Donald Trump, who has sent every signal that he will run a campaign that is entirely disrespectful of her personally, of the truth, of minority groups, of the media and of a variety of basic democratic norms.
As her recent speech attacking Mr. Trump on foreign policy showed, Ms. Clinton will argue that she is steady and reasonable where Mr. Trump is temperamental and unhinged and she will have plenty of reasons and opportunities to argue that he is unfit to be president. Yet if she is going to be the candidate of dignity and political responsibility, she will have to do some things differently if she does not also want to be the candidate of rank hypocrisy.
One of the many political norms that Mr. Trump has set about eroding is transparency, with his fidelity to certain lies and his refusal to release his tax returns, despite decades of contrary precedent. Ms. Clinton has released a trove of tax records but for months has declined to honor another essential expectation of the nations leaders and would-be leaders: She has not held a real news conference since December.
