Why James Comey Is, and Isn’t, Donald Trump


 

Senator John F. Kennedy had two huge political vulnerabilities.

One was that he was Catholic and many protestants had a deep and abiding distrust of what was sometimes called “popery.” If government somehow fell under the sway of Catholics, the entire country would be run from Rome. The Pope would oppress non-Catholic churches. Democracy itself would disappear. Kennedy dealt with that in a series of public appearances, clearly stating his opposition to any religious interference with basic freedom.

The other vulnerability was that he came from a wealthy family. He would be unable to relate to everyday citizens, insulated as he must be from the cares and pressures of ordinary financial life. He disarmed some of that concern by reaching out sympathetically to the working poor in West Virginia and in other states.

And he used humor. In 1958, he spoke to the Gridiron Club in New York. No recording is available of the future President at that moment. But Chris Matthews quotes from the transcript as Kennedy reads from what he told his audience was a telegram from his very rich father:

Jack, don’t buy one more vote than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

The Chris Matthews Show, March 13, 2011

A year and 8 months later, he won the Presidency by a hair. He later told audiences that he felt a little like a fictional mayor elected by a single vote. As Kennedy told it, every time that mayor ventured out, he encountered at least one constituent who would inform him: I’m the vote that put you over the top. You owe your job to me.

Hillary Clinton owes her Presidential loss to many things. If any one of them had not come together, she would be in office today. If the creaky old electoral college, that legacy from the slave-holding south, had been replaced, if she had not swooned from dehydration in the heat that New York summer, if she had devoted one more day to Pennsylvania, if she hadn’t chosen door number one instead of door number two.

But the final blow that did her in, that reduced a decisive 11 point lead into a “mere” 2 points, 3 million votes, was that series of needless public reminders of a gratuitous public scolding by the head of the Federal Bureau of investigation.

But a firing for all the wrong reasons can generate its own public reaction.

From a purely legal point of view, the James Comey book tour is God’s gift to whomever is left of Donald Trump’s legal team. The old legal prayer dates from Revolutionary War days:

O that mine enemy would write a book.

Brigadier General Peter Horry, 1743-1815

But Donald Trump’s choice of his field of battle reminds me of my own life experience. When medical people talked with me about an eye operation, they told me that without it, I would go blind. It reinforced what life had already taught me. A decision becomes easy to make when there is only one choice.

Mr. Trump’s best legal strategy is to restrict himself to the court of public opinion. Even that is not going well. But that is still the only court where he seems to have any chance at all. Okay, I suppose he could still follow the good example of Edward Snowden and defect to Moscow, under the protection of Russian Don Vladimir Putin.

Public opinion is where Donald Trump is flailing against the very tall James Comey. The former FBI Director whom my President famously fired is 6 feet 8 inches. In the public arena he is is gigantic, a walking Empire State Building with arms. The contrast with Donald Trump is striking:

President Trump is a stranger to truth. And that fact is transparent to pretty much everyone who can think. He is the subject of late night humor.

According to the Washington Post, which has been keeping track, I guess, yesterday Trump told his 2,000th lie since taking office.

So Happy Lie-2-K, everybody. 2,000 lies! In 11 months.

Jimmy Kimmel, January 10, 2017

James Comey looks so straight arrow you expect him to be always pointing north. He could have been describing his own self-image, the image he projects in every public appearance, as he testified to Congress about the agency he had directed.

First I want the American people to know this truth: the FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

Strong, honest, independent are the qualities we see as he speaks to Congress, as he speaks to interviewers, as he writes in his new book. It is a remarkable contrast to his view of my President. That view resonates with his public. And it ought to.

We see a Presidential loss of independence whenever Vladimir Putin becomes involved.

There’s a nonzero possibility that the Russians have some, some sway over him that is rooted in his personal experience. I don’t know whether that’s the business about the activity in a Moscow hotel room or finances or something else.

Comey finds it striking that Donald Trump has no appreciable trust, no dependable image within his own family. Why is he concerned with an unverified story of Moscow prostitutes? His wife might believe it. Mr. Comey finds that astonishing.

How can there be a 1% chance your wife thinks you’re with prostitutes doing that in a Moscow hotel room?

I’m a flawed character, but I’m highly confident my wife would say there literally is zero chance that my husband did that. And so I remember thinking, what kind of man and what kind of relationship does you wife think there’s only a 99 percent chance you didn’t do this?

He mentions public Presidential statements that would offend any citizen of good will: The denigrating by ethnicity, the crediting of those marching arm-in-arm with self-proclaimed Nazis reflect a disqualifying personal character.

And there is Mr. Trump’s estrangement from personal integrity:

A president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.

All roads lead to the image Mr. Comey wants to project for the FBI, and for himself.

First I want the American people to know this truth: the FBI is honest. The FBI is strong. And the FBI is, and always will be, independent.

He speaks from the heart. He believes in the FBI. The FBI has his complete loyalty. He would do anything to protect that honesty, that strength. Above all, he would make any personal sacrifice, fight any threat to the independence of his agency.

That image, the image he projects himself, the image he wants the public to believe about the FBI strikes me as the most consistent part of his personality.

First I want the American people to know…

First I want the American people to know…

You could see it in recent television interviews as he finally goes public against Donald Trump.

The honesty and the image that reflects that honesty:

…and the good I hope to come out of it is for me to offer a vision to people, especially young people, about what ethical leadership is what it should look like.

What it should look like.

What ethical leadership should appear to be shines more brightly in his public words than the reality itself.

He receives the same news as the rest of us when Special Counsel Robert Mueller dismisses two FBI agents who had sent private messages to each other that had been critical of Donald Trump. His criticism is biting.

The FBI is a public trust organization. That we are impartial is obviously really important, the reality. But the perception of it is also important.

Perception is at least as important as reality.

And that is how we arrived at the election of the man he detests.

It is the elevation of appearance beyond reality that motivated a violation of norms. When Hillary Clinton was found to have violated no laws at all, he did not follow established rules. He felt the FBI could not, by acting fairly, be seen to have acted fairly.

Senator Susan Collins (R-MN), explains:

To me, the first misstep that James Comey made after a very distinguished career was not eleven days before the election. It was back in the summer of 2016, the press conference, in which he did something very unusual. As an investigator he announced, and that violated the Department of Justice’s own guidelines, the decision not to indict Hillary Clinton.

And then excoriated her for her handling of classified information. That’s not an appropriate role for the FBI director. And it seems to me that, unfortunately, Mr. Comey stopped making investigative judgments and instead was making political assessments.

Reportedly, Mr. Comey will not be charged with leaking information which was only later classified as secret, coincidentally the charge for which Mrs. Clinton was investigated, cleared, and then subjected to a public beating by Mr. Comey.

Procedures have evolved over time for a reason. Within my lifetime, investigations conducted away from the public eye were then routinely used later to officially attack people who were not in a position to fight back.

There is evidence that they were extremely careless…

In many ways, the J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy days are over. Every once in a while we stray along a path that is uncomfortably close.

Sometimes reputations are damaged. In this case, an election was affected.

Advocates are tempted to put a rhetorical thumb on the scale of judgment. Mr. Comey presents the choices in that moment as between two extremes. He could be the advocate of honesty or the captive of dishonesty. He could act for openness or he could act for concealment. The only ones who would disagree with that assessment would be those of us who are blinded by partisanship.

When that case began, I knew we were gonna piss off at least half of partisans. It never occurred to me we would piss off all of them.

Following established procedure, refraining from comment would have been fair, and it would have followed procedures in other cases. But it would not have been perceived that way by Republican partisans. The image had to be preserved.

To avoid damaging that valuable image…

…the FBI is honest, strong, independent…

…he surrendered to possible criticism. He used his position to savage someone who could not effectively fight back,

…extremely careless…

his harsh, blistering,

…very sensitive…

words were designed to wound.

…highly classified…

He had decided to project and image of honesty, strength, and independence, by acting toward the opposite reality.

He seems unconscious of irony as he attacks two agents who had privately exchanged unflattering messages about Donald Trump, and therefore were fired by Mr. Mueller.

Their bad-mouthing candidates using FBI devices is just terrible.

…bad-mouthing candidates using FBI devices…

For Mr. Comey, it had become a matter of trusting the American people, or not trusting them, to see honor and independence simply because those qualities were there to be seen without additional manipulation.

There has been a resurgence of American activism. Mr. Comey sees people marching for the rights of others. He sees teenagers rising from tragedy after gun shootings and campaigning for the common good. He suggests an optimistic faith.

And so I’m optimistic that this country’s values are strong enough, that we will not only survive this, we will thrive and re-balance ourselves in the wake of this.

The nation was harmed when, at a crucial moment, he did not have the strength of that faith.

Among his criticisms of Mr. Trump, the dishonesty, the cowardice, the selfishness, the bluster, he offers a clear contrast. For Mr. Comey is honest to a fault, courageous, self-sacrificing, low-key. He is upright and virtuous. He has suffered for his virtues.

In that contrast of Comey virtue and Trump vice, there are discomforting similarities. The most dangerous is the willingness to rationalize the violation of established norms. Clear and fair norms are designed to protect us from the abuses of the self-righteous, as well as the wrongdoing of the powerful.

But, for Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, those rules are for lesser folk.

In that regard, Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey are, and will remain forever, bound in a brotherhood of superior self-regard.


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