It was enough to make you nostalgic for
the days of J. Edgar Hoover. If Hoover had had as much on any
president, presidential candidate, or pretty much anyone else as
James Comey had, he wouldn't have talked about it, he certainly
wouldn't have told Congress, and he would have kept it carefully
hidden, to be used as blackmail material later on, should the need
arise. J. Edgar was the great puppet master of his time, and he
struck fear into the hearts of anybody and everybody who had any
interest in getting, or staying, ahead in Washington, DC or in
politics in general. He was, arguably, the most powerful man in
Washington, at least in the later decades of his
seemingly-interminable tenure.
But those days are over with, and now
we're in the era of public spectacles, open accusations, open
denials, and all the rest of it. Some will argue that this is an
improvement over the old secretive, hypocritical days; I don't know.
It could be argued that pretending is preferable to mucking about in
the offal under the glare of the multi-media spotlight; at least it
lent a slightly more dignified air to things.
And has corruption become worse, or is
it just more public? It is certainly harder to keep secrets now, with
the breaking of the old-time media monopolies and the rise of
alternative information sources like WikiLeaks. The larger question
as to whether increased exposure will noticeably alter human
political behavior is as yet unanswered, but I'm not optimistic.
In any case, in the midst of the 2016
presidential campaign came James Comey, an apparently scrupulous and
honest man who happened to be working for, and within, a remarkably
corrupt administration. So his life must have been an endless series
of decisions, on an almost daily basis – do you please the boss by
adhering to her suggestions and “guidance”, or do you follow the
mission statement of the agency you're in charge of? In other words,
do you do the right thing, and damn the consequences? The FBI is, I
would say, more above politics than the average government department
or agency, but can it possibly be totally above politics? Highly
unlikely. So anyone in that position has to choose, and they have to
fall back on their own principles on a regular basis. (Or, if they
have no principles, fall back on politics.)
So what comes out of all this seems
strange at times. Comey recommended that Clinton and/or her aides not
be indicted, but then laid out an elaborately detailed case that made
it clear that they could have been, except (implied) that his boss,
i.e. the attorney general, would never have pursued the matter. And
then three months later, after having effectively said (to Congress)
“case closed” he comes back with new information – all in the
interests of full disclosure, avoiding the appearance of a cover up,
etc.
I think in the first case he knew full
well that no indictment was ever going to come out of the Justice
Department, so to save face (the agency's and his own) he declined to
recommend it. But because he is an honest man, and wanted to “make
a statement”, basically in defiance of the overall corruption of
the administration, he laid out the case. So, on balance, were
Clinton & Co. pleased or annoyed? They certainly acted pleased,
but when someone hangs out a pile of your dirty laundry you're bound
to be annoyed as well. Did Comey have any reason to think he was
going to be fired by Obama/Lynch? I believe he had taken care of that
matter by his recommendation not to indict – plus, he had to be
aware of the long-standing ambivalence in the relationship between
Obama and Clinton. It wouldn't be the worse thing in the world for
Clinton to be in a bit of hot water, in other words; in some ways it
would validate the fact that Obama had been nominated in 2008 and had
won.
But did Comey have any reason to think
he would be fired on Day One of the next Clinton administration,
assuming that Hillary had won, which – up to that point – seemed
like a certainty? It seems like he would have ample reason to think
that – and so when the next avalanche of e-mails happened, he
figured he had nothing to lose by not only notifying Congress, but by
telling everybody that he had done so.
There is nothing more dangerous, in a
sense, than a dead man walking – if that dead man still has some
weapons at his disposal. And you'll notice that, although Justice put up a fight on this, he was not totally slapped down or fired.
Perhaps they knew better, at least prior to the election – you
know, “optics” and all that. Their real attitude would have
become much clearer on Nov. 9, but we'll never know for certain.
I must say, though, that there is
something particularly delicious about the fact that the entire
second look at Hillary's e-mails started with an investigation into
Anthony Weiner's “sexting” with an underage female. The karmic
significance of this cannot be overstated. And to add to the
deliciousness is the possibility that the attorney general held off
on quashing Comey's letter to Congress because she had been
compromised by her airside chit-chat with Bill Clinton, as explained
in this article:
This has to be one of the “funnest”
connect-the-dots puzzles in recent memory – especially when the
picture that emerges is, not surprisingly, one of bottomless
corruption spiced up with incompetence, grandiosity, and a towering
attitude of entitlement. How often do we see people really and truly
getting the comeuppance they deserve? It's a gift that just keeps on
giving – and the reason it does is that the dead keep coming back
to life, like in a B-grade horror flick. Hillary lost (1) the
nomination in 2008, (2) the election in 2016, (3) the recount in
2016, and (4) the Electoral College vote in 2016. As Rush Limbaugh
said, shouldn't we at least give her a participation trophy?
(And by the way, if Trump doesn't keep
Comey on as FBI director, he's betraying the guy who may well have
put him into office. In this respect at least, I agree with
Hillary.)
No comments:
Post a Comment