Today, Trump stood beside a tanker of Venezuelan crude oil and said “to the victor belong the spoils.” This is a line American leaders have spent more than a century working to retire. The phrase comes from an 1832 speech by a New York senator defending the spoils system of rewarding loyalists with government jobs, likening the prizes of an election to the plunder of war. Americans rightfully came to see that as corruption, and by the 1880s the spoils system gave way to merit-based hiring. The past hundred years carried that same idea onto the world stage. Roosevelt and Churchill pledged that the Allies sought no territorial gain from the war. After victory, America kept that promise and helped rebuild the nations it had defeated. The choice built the most prosperous era in human history. Open trade and a world where borders aren't redrawn by force made America safer and stronger. When other powers grab land or resources, from Russia to China, we have rightly called it out. My grandfather's generation won the largest war ever fought and walked away from the spoils. They believed America leads by example. Taking a cut of another nation's oil through a deal with a businessman who has faced corruption and money laundering investigations in several countries, while Venezuelans still wait for free elections, breaks faith with that legacy. It also is a lousy way to try and lower gas prices. washingtonsun.com/whitehouse…