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. 

The Ironic Cherry Reads... What's Up with James Comey?

The Unmaking of the President

2016

by

Lanny J. Davis

I am not a fan of James Comey.  He is smug and smarmy and carries himself with the self-satisfied aura of Mike Pence and Neil Gorsuch.  I look forward to reading what promises to be a self-serving memoir entitled A Higher Loyalty much as I looked forward to the 60 Minutes interview with Stormy Daniels; that is, with a great deal of skepticism.

I picked up the book, The Unmaking of the President 2016, when it came up in my library search for Comey's book.  With all the Trump/Russia/election books out there, this one seemed to have gone under the radar.  Since I have less time to waste these days, I did a quick google search for the author and the book, and decided it would be worth the effort.  And I needed a more objective narrative before I tackled Comey in his own words.

It is a shame that we are reading trash like Fire and Fury while this book goes unnoticed.  It is a clear and well-documented record of the FBI "investigation" of Clinton's emails, and describes precisely how -- and why -- this incredible interference into the 2016 presidential election came to be.

Going way back to the reporting on the initial fake Clinton scandal known as Whitewater, Davis describes the biased and inaccurate reporting of the New York Times, and then the similar biased coverage in its misleading reporting of the FBI email investigation.  In a nutshell:  When the fact of Hillary's use of a private email server became news, she said, "I want the public to see my email(s).  I asked State to release them.  They said they will review them for release as soon as possible."  This routine "security investigation" to determine if any documents to be released were confidential was reported by the Times as a "criminal investigation."

Throughout, insinuations became headlines, and corrections and clarifications were buried near the bottom of the page.  Right wing media like Fox and Breitbart began the rallying cry and mainstream media led by the Times was all too happy to follow suit.  And it was Clinton season in the political hunting world once again.

The sainted Comey (self-sainted, I would like to add) may have been best known for the moral stance he took by standing up to Bush administration pressure to reauthorize illegal spying.  But, as recounted in The Guardian, Comey is not a huge fan of civil liberties.  He has backed torture, warrantless wiretapping, and indefinite detention.  Davis claims that Comey's heroic act had more to do with "technical issues" -- and maybe also the fact of the Bush administration trying to do an end run around Comey to get to a hospitalized John Ashcroft -- than with principled opposition to the program.

Democrats have been heralding Comey as a hero once again since his firing by Trump.  Of course, the idiot-in-chief tried to con the Democrats by saying Comey was fired because of the bad things he did to Hillary --  even though he admitted on national TV that he indeed fired Comey because of the "Russier thing."  While we aren't buying that load of Trump manure, we should also be wary of the man who said during his Senate testimony:  "It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.  But honestly, it wouldn't change the decision."

There have been things about Comey and the FBI leading up to the election that have made me mildly nauseous as well.  I have wondered about Comey's anti-Clinton bias, as he was supposed to have been honorable and non-partisan.  I wondered at his extremely poor judgment and apparently partisan exposure of the Clinton investigation while keeping the Trump investigation under wraps.  And I wondered why on earth he would make the announcement that he was reopening the investigation on October 28, going against long-standing DOJ policy not to make public announcements that close to an election that might effect the outcome.

Which leads us to Rudy Giuliani and the New York FBI.  Ignorant as I am about the goings on of the New York FBI, there was just something squirrelly about Giuliani's gleeful and somewhat mad TV appearances days and even weeks before Comey's October 28 surprise.  Because "surprise" was exactly what Giuliani was crowing about.  Davis explains this puzzle in a way that makes all the crazy pieces fit.

Take years of a rabid republican Congress trying to dig up scandal against the presumed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, add to that the festering Giuliani and his New York FBI cronies, and top it off with a year and a half of Trump's paranoid harangue that everybody is out to get him and the election is being rigged.  The end result is Comey being twisted and influenced because of his own need to be seen as above the fray, morally and politically superior to those around him.

Davis ends his argument with an impressive chapter detailing objective measures that point to the effect of the Comey letter on the outcome of the election.  Yes, it is possible, and he does not just point to a single poll but several measures that show strong consensus in the dramatic changes that occurred after October 28.

The last chapter of the book is a strange one, in that it led me to ask:  "Why is this here?"  It is labeled "Epilogue" and details the impeachment process and twenty-fifth amendment:  the history, the process and the relevance.  Again, it is well-drawn and important, but really has nothing to do with Comey.  At all.  I couldn't help but imagine that the author was so impassioned by the need to rid ourselves of the scourge of Donald Trump (as are we all) that he just had to include this appeal.  Whatever his reasoning, I'm glad his editors let this tangential bit in.

I am also glad that I found this book before diving into Comey's memoir.

One last thought:

A better title might have been, "The Unmaking of the Presidency."

The Fear and Trashing of Hillary Rodham Clinton

The Ironic Cherry reads...

What Happened

by

Hillary Rodham Clinton

A few years ago, as I began to listen to the audiobook of Hillary's years as Secretary of State, Hard Choices, I became aware that I was listening for signs of duplicity.  I have been an admirer of Clinton's since It Takes a Village way back in 1996, and actually from the time she became First Lady.  But sad as this may be, the doubts creep back whenever I have lost touch with her.  As I read, I found not any trace of duplicity.  Rather, she spoke as she always does, from her heart, and with a great deal of knowledge.  She spoke with self-awareness and even a touch of self-deprecation.  Her words were measured and intelligent.  She is, was, and will continue to be, a masterful writer, and one with a lot to say.

So I was discouraged, but not entirely surprised, when the reaction I heard to her new book from way too many women was: the election is over, and Hillary should just go away.  That is the tragedy of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

She has been trashed mercilessly, and quite stupidly, for decades.  Politicians and the media were tickled to put her in the headlights over Bill's sexual indiscretions.  Men were more than happy to attack her victimhood, and saddest of all, women joined in to critique her behavior during this most personal of difficult times.

And so it goes.  We have heard about her hair and her pantsuits ad nauseum.  Before she was First Lady, she had had to deal with Bill's inability to get re-elected in Arkansas with a wife who practiced law and went by her given name.  And then, when she reached the White House, there was the national incident over her comment that she chose not to stay home and have teas and bake cookies.  If you recall, that was such a focus of our attention that she ended up sharing her mother's chocolate chip cookie recipe with the world, to prove she actually could bake.

Then things got serious, as republicans decided that the Clintons were too popular.  The road to the Clintons' demise, began with Bill's womanizing; those headlines were such a hit, that the mudslingers at the republican party turned over every damn leaf to find dirt to aim at them.  They hit the mother lode with investigations over the business venture Whitewater.  Those of you who wheel and deal in business know that there are way too many grey lines in big deals.  And even though Bill and Hillary were never found guilty of misconduct, some were, and that, my friend, is all you need to fuel the fires of suspicion.

Headlines.  That is all most of us have time for.  And when there was no proof, allegations and innuendo were enough.  And since Bill and Hillary ended up with a fair amount of wealth, it is even easier to stoke the fires.

Add to that the internet, and we have gone from rumors that Bill had murdered his friend Vince Foster, which keeps popping up like rats in sludge, to the absurd near tragedy of last year's Pizzagate.  Fact is, when there are no facts to denigrate Hillary Clinton, a lie will always do.

And add to that the absolute cruelty of those who hate Hillary, armed with Facebook and Twitter.  And the sad, sad fact that the news media can NOT turn away from potential scandal, the uglier the better, but if ugly isn't available, stupid will do, as proven by video loops of her falling.

There we were, then, in 2016, with smart women shaking their heads and saying, "I just don't trust her."

Why don't you trust her?  Either we don't know enough about her or we know too much about her.  She shows too much emotion or not enough.

Fact is, we probably know more about Hillary than we do of any candidate who has ever run for president.  We know more personal stuff about her than we have any right to know.  We know more about her finances than any other president (I don't even need to mention the secretive crook that is skulking around the White House these days).  For all the millions of dollars that have been spent to try to dig up financial irregularities about Hillary and Bill, you might think there would be something to show for it.

The republicans may not be able to get the dollar signs out of their eyes in order to see how their financial fantasies erode our economy, but they do know how to spread contention and distrust.  Let us not give Trump all the credit; the republican party spread manure over the soil to make it fertile ground in which to grow all of Trump's hate.

We liberals like to talk with disdain about the uninformed American, but there are levels of being uninformed.  As I said earlier, most of us don't have time for more than headlines.  Some of us, who work too hard and struggle to raise families, don't even have time for that.  But if you are going to make an informed decision about a candidate, you just have to go underneath the headlines.  To the source.  And the source is out there.

From the time that reality show host rode down the escalator, the media was a captive audience.  Every ugly word was captured in prime time, every day.

But Hillary's campaign wasn't about invective.  It was about policies.  And she had plans, lots of them.  That is what Hillary does.  She looks at a problem and figures out how to make it better.  And she doesn't let anything slip by.

We don't know that because while we were watching the republican car wreck, Hillary was making speeches about the economy and women's rights, education and technology.  I watched a couple of her speeches, so few because I had to actually remember to take the time to find them on C-Span or the internet.  But let me tell you, they were wonderful.  Those of you who think she neglected the middle class, the white middle class, didn't focus enough on jobs, focused too much on "identity politics," you weren't there.  You were listening to her campaign through pundits, who were obediently repeating rumors about emails.

And we women, myself very much included, have the quality which makes our daughters strong and smart and determined:  we are incredibly hard on women, ourselves, our friends, our daughters.  We had criticisms for Hillary that were ridiculous in comparison to all the others who ran for president in 2016.  And we also had the cloud that had been polluting her space for thirty years.

As with all things Hillary, in talking about her book pre-publication, the media highlighted two of the most tantalizing tidbits:  1) James Comey's part in her defeat; and 2) Trump stalking her at the town hall debate.  Which led us to believe that the book would be an obsessive rant about her defeat.

I would not have blamed her if that was what it had been.  After having to take more crap than any other politician ever, she certainly would have been entitled.  But that is not at all what this memoir is about.

The content of What Happened is much like the title, which is much like Hillary herself.  In the book she explores the state of women in politics, her relationship with Putin as Secretary of State and the involvement of Russia in derailing an already dysfunctional political system, and yes, the email nonsense.  She does it in a down-to-earth and objective way, while also honestly acknowledging her feelings and perceptions throughout and since.  She also tells us about a day on the trail, because she gets asked about it a lot.  She tells us about her grandchildren and her friends, and how they have helped her heal and given her hope.

Except she has always had hope.  The thing that I love about Hillary, besides her intelligence and morality, is that she always has hope.  She is always going to get up and fight again, and it infuriates her enemies.  I believe her willingness to look at herself critically and admit mistakes also drives her enemies crazy, because you have got to be tough to admit to your faults and come away better.

Since publication, Hillary has given some great interviews, the latest with Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.

What Happened provides so much more important and fascinating detail about, yes, what happened.  Most important, as Hillary has said in the book and in interviews, we need to truly understand what went on so that it won't happen again.  In this book, she talks about it as though she were sitting in the room with us, sharing her ideas and experience.

After all these years, we owe it to ourselves to get to know Hillary Rodham Clinton, who I believe will go down as one of the greatest and most influential women in American history.

The Stupids Run for President

As if there weren't enough to worry about, I am reading Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath by Ted Koppel.

In light of President Obama's final State of the Union tonight, I am going to say that the parade of creeps -- and their supporters -- lined up to take charge is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Based on the performance of the circus act known as the Republican Congress, we are in big trouble.  We currently have our crazy uncle holding the purse strings to our country, their kids are all eight-year-old bullies, and because they are religious freaks who don't believe God wanted them to use birth control, there are a lot of those bullies around.  They may not be smart, but they know how to riot and they are allowed to carry guns.  They may not understand how the world works, but they know how to line up at the polling place and push that button that says "R."

Those right wingnuts in Congress have taken the shock of 9/11, followed by war and a "great recession" and used those horrific events to train the bullies to set their sights on a black president, a woman leader in the House, and the poor and minority people of this country.  The Tea Party voters may not be good at math, but they make up for it with enthusiasm:  wipe out food stamps and NPR and we can get rid of that nasty federal deficit.  Build that wall and we'll have good jobs again, get rid of Muslims and all those white people carrying guns will stop shooting up theaters and churches.

I recently caught a minute of a Rand Paul event on C-Span in which one of those geniuses in the town hall crowd was railing about a government that can't control companies that pollute the environment with things like oil spills.  I should have taped it, because I still don't believe I really heard it.  "You idiot!"  I shouted at the woman.  "Don't you know who that IS?"  Rand Paul, who would get rid of the EPA, who believes government regulation is bad, bad, BAD.

It takes me back to the beginning days of the Obama administration, when the Tea Party turned up to protest in DC, complaining about the poor public transportation, which had been caused by Tea Party budget cuts.

Which brings me back to cybersecurity.  Because while fools like Ted Cruz are implying that "carpetbombing" our enemies will keep us safe, those who truly control the country, like Wall Street and all those companies that have their hands on the electric grid, can't be made to share their vulnerabilities with the federal government or each other in order to make them safe from cyberattack.  Like Nikki Haley a couple of years ago, I imagine once our enemies attack Congress will give us a free year of credit reports.

We're holding on to our guns while the smart psychopaths are working on the capability of pulling the plug on our government and industry computers.

And our candidates for president?  Clueless.  What they do know is how to get the crowd riled up.  Much like Barnum and Bailey, they know there is a sucker born every minute, and those suckers are happy to wave their guns and get in line at the voting booths.

And, by the way, I'd like to stop hearing that these are people who have been hurt by economic downturns.  Take a look at the people turning up to cheer for Cruz and Rubio.  They are teachers and small business people, they are trading in their economy cars for trucks and SUV's again, and they never have to worry about whether to see a doctor or repair the roof.  They are pissed off because they have been given permission to be pissed off, and it feels good to have someone to blame, even if they aren't entirely sure what they are angry at.

And if that's how to get elected, our bunch of republican candidates are happy to point them in a convenient direction.  The Stupids are not only running for president, but are waving their guns and cheering, and lining up to vote.