What Comey Forgot

Not too long ago I wrote about an important book that went under the radar called, The Unmaking of the President 2016.  The book explains quite thoroughly how Comey's clumsy handling of the Hillary email fiasco caused Trump to win the election.  At the time, I got pretty snarky in describing James Comey.  But I do try to be fair, and now that I have heard him analyze the bizarre details of his past couple of years in the spotlight, and have read his book, A Higher Loyalty, I find that I have changed my opinion of the man.

I believe I have referred to James Comey as smug and compared him to Pence and Gorsuch, which would conveniently make them the unholy trinity of vanity, hypocrisy and self-righteousness.  But I don't believe Comey is like that at all.

He seems to be honestly struggling to do the right thing.  He can be self-deprecating, which means he is attempting to be objective and is aware of his own very human fallibility.  He has a sense of humor, which immediately separates him from the humorless Pence and Gorsuch, as well as Donald Trump.  By the way, I have for some time been aware that Trump never smiles or laughs, a feature of the narcissist-in-chief that had also come to Comey's attention.

Comey has a lot to say about bullying.  In his book he describes having been both a victim of bullying and an instance wherein he became a bully in his younger days.  This kind of self-analysis and insight makes his narrative of the election of Donald Trump both personal and relevant to the current political era.

As with all heroes, Comey's greatest strength became his Achilles heel.  The need to be honest and fair brought him to national attention during the Bush years, when he went head to head with Dick Cheney over the reauthorization of the NSA surveillance program "Stellar Wind."  It was a dramatic moment, when Jim Comey dashed to John Ashcroft's hospital room -- in intensive care -- to head off White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card who were trying to force Ashcroft to sign the reauthorization.

Because of this, Comey had a great deal of respect and credibility when he began the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as Secretary of State.

In his book, Comey goes into great detail explaining the situation as he saw it, and each step of his decision making.  It is obvious from this narrative that he has not only examined his actions but looked to others of his peers for their analysis.  He is aware that his actions may have influenced the election, and he has admitted that the thought of having a hand in electing the deranged and dangerous Donald Trump makes him "mildly nauseous."

I can appreciate, after the diarrhea of lies that have come from Donald Trump and his swamp creatures, that James Comey is being honest.  I share his nausea over the events that led to the election of Donald Trump.  I value the extent of his self-examination in order to get this account right.

But James Comey has missed an even greater factor in this tragic event.  He has neglected to include the effects of a corrupt Congress in the way this story has played out.

The story goes way back, but it was the republicans in Congress after the election of Barack Obama, and subsequently the Tea Party extremists that took over who represent the bully in the room.

It was minutes after Obama's inauguration that the republican leaders in Congress were meeting to strategize how to defeat the president.  Mitch McConnell famously and unashamedly stated,

John Boehner on the floor of the House led the rage with a cry of "Hell no you can't" as he talked about the proposed health care bill, a bill republicans refused to be a part of constructing, and then told the American people that the Democrats were excluding them from the process.

Republicans in Congress thwarted Obama's every effort to move the near-dead economy, ignored or distorted his successes and magnified out of context the defeats. Remember Solyndra?  Thanks to republican spin and the media echo chamber, all the successes that resulted from government investment in such small businesses were buried under headlines about this one failed attempt. 

That was the way Obama's eight years went under this republican Congress, as they doubled down on lies and false accusations with each electoral success.

While ignoring the hunting down of bin Laden and the winding down of one of our most tragic wars, republicans in Congress did not just refuse to work as partners with Obama in defeating our enemies, they actively opposed whatever he proposed.  Isis?  Syria?  The dynamic and entertaining McCain/Graham duo found fault with it all.  McConnell and Boehner refused to offer any constructive alternatives.  In fact, Congress did not offer any legislation that could be seen as a commitment one way or the other; all they offered was cynical criticism of anything Obama thought might work.  And because he believed that he should be working with Congress, he hesitated to take strong actions in Syria without agreement from Congress.  Although Obama's diplomacy turned out well at the time, he has faced contempt throughout for failing to act when Assad "crossed the red line."

And the whole Hillary project may have begun as an innocent misogynist reaction to the smart and powerful wife of a president, but by the time her intentions to run for president had barely been announced, the same game went into play.  Her every action was criticized, lies were told and then retold by the press, and the Hillary that can't be trusted became the narrative. 

The obstructionism worked, because the republican party united in their loud opposition.  They worked the media, and they played the American people.  They lied and then they lied again.

So, when Donald Trump brought his tantrums and lies to his campaign, the only difference between him and Congressional republicans was the degree and the flamboyance.  And because the media likes to follow shiny objects, like the orange hair, we got to witness every moment of the blowhard's traveling salvation show, with fake miracles and full-blown hate and hysteria.

Sadly, Trump gets full credit for Obama's failure to act more aggressively against Russian election interference.  And surely Trump was by then the bully that controlled the entire show.  He spewed anti-democratic hatred with far more flair than his republican allies.  But without eight years of the bombast and bullying of the republican party and Congressional leaders, Trump would have most likely been dismissed as a crackpot.  Without a Congress that refused to fight for anything other than their own survival, Obama would have fought hard against Russian interference.  But the bullies were harassing and attacking one of the candidates, and the opponent was making shrill accusations of cheating.  Bullies win when they cause the rest of us to lose confidence and to hesitate to do what is right.  The bullies won because Obama did not want to be seen as interfering in the election, as the bullies had already intimated.

And this is where Comey lost the thread of the narrative.  He thought he was cooperating with a responsible branch of government, but Congress was a fully partisan player in destroying Hillary Clinton.  He reported to Congress about emails as though the emails were the issue, and not the defamation of a candidate for president.  And then he went back again, because he had promised he would if anything changed, even though he had no reason to believe anything had changed.

Just as Obama went timidly into these last weeks of this election, Comey went obediently to Congress.  He ignored the advice of his boss and he rationalized ignoring precedent, and he interfered in the presidential election by jumping into an investigation because he was afraid of not opening it, and he reported it to Congress and the American people, because he was afraid he would be seen as dishonest if he didn't.

There are times when one has to take the risk of doing the wrong thing in order to do the right thing.  That last decision point, days before the election, was when James Comey decided it was more important that he be seen as trustworthy rather than that he had followed precedent and law.

James Comey has had to face the reality, through his subsequent dealings and ultimate firing by Donald Trump, that his attempt to be honorable led to a disaster for our democracy.  Out of fear of being seen as dishonorable, he allowed himself to be used by a corrupt Congress and a megalomaniac candidate.  Had he not come forward to announce the reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, the outcome of the election would surely have been different.  But then he would have had to face accusations of partisanship by the other side.  And that is where being honorable would really have come into play.

Which brings me to the point of the whole thing.  We have a Congress that is dirty.  Congressional republicans have proven to be wholly partisan and untrustworthy.  They have chosen to continue to hide facts in order to support a corrupt and unbalanced leader in order to maintain their hold over our democracy.  In Germany in 1933, it took elected members of the republic to give Hitler the power to create a dictatorship.  And today we have lapdogs like Devin Nunes and power mongers like Mitch McConnell paving the way for the illegal and undemocratic acts of the Trump administration.  Today this Congressional majority is not only thwarting efforts to protect Robert Mueller from being fired by Donald Trump, they have undermined the investigation into Russian interference.  And incredibly, we continue to hear from one or the other that they think Congress should reopen investigations on Hillary.

While Trump keeps us busy following his criminal and crazy rants, Congress is truly the arm in which the fate of our democracy rests.  I don't believe we can take another session of republican rule.  Not only have they gutted laws that protect 98 percent of us, they have stood by as Trump signs away our environment and our liberties.  They happily approve federal judges that represent the far right:  big business, big money and the curbing of individual freedoms.  They continue to hope baiting us with Planned Parenthood and the Second Amendment will keep them in power, and are blind to the threats to our democracy.  In so doing, they have become the greatest threat to our democracy.

This is why we must do everything we can to turn over both houses of Congress in November.  The only way we can survive the terrorism of Donald Trump is by electing a Congress that will fight for our democratic principles.

We cannot be passive during this midterm election season.  Be informed.  Volunteer.  Donate.  Spread the word.  Vote.

Our lives and our children's futures depend on it.