From the Left

/

Politics

A tale of two Comeys

Ruth Marcus on

WASHINGTON -- In life, as in literature, the more complex character is the more compelling and the more realistic. We may crave heroes but we end up with humans. The cardboard figure of unblemished rectitude, who performs impeccably under pressure and is impelled only by the purest motives, gives way to a real person, with all the inevitable blemishes and failings that human nature is heir to.

So it is with James Comey, the fired FBI director.

The nation's first introduction to Comey came a decade ago, with his dramatic account of racing to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to head off an effort to pressure the gravely ill Ashcroft to reauthorize a secret surveillance program.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey described the tense scene as top White House aides arrived at Ashcroft's room in an unavailing effort to secure his signature. FBI agents, dispatched by, yes, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller, were posted outside the door to prevent Comey's ouster as he faced down the president's men.

This was Comey as superhero, able to leap up hospital stairs in a single bound. It was Comey as resolute public servant, leader of a brave band prepared to quit rather than waver in defense of the rule of law.

"I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis," Comey testified. "I just simply couldn't stay."

 

Comey, the sequel, presents a figure more nuanced, imperfect -- and realistic. The fired FBI director may have an aw-shucks demeanor ("Lordy, I hope there are tapes") but he exposed himself as a Washington operator and survivor, with all the bureaucratic maneuvering and sail-trimming that entails.

This Comey didn't confront, he navigated, walking the treacherously narrow path between his desire not to alienate the new president and his mounting alarm at Trump's heedlessness of proper boundaries.

Thus, according to Comey's account, he found himself at an uncomfortably intimate dinner with the president in the Green Room, seeking to defuse Trump's demand for loyalty first with stone-faced silence, next by acceding to the president's oxymoronic "honest loyalty."

As Comey recalled, "I decided it wouldn't be productive to push it further."

...continued

swipe to next page

 

 

Comics

Mike Luckovich David Fitzsimmons Chip Bok Jeff Koterba Gary McCoy Drew Sheneman