I am a great fan of James Comey's book, A Higher Loyalty. It got a mixed reaction from the punditry and Trump certainly went after him. As I recall the word "showboater" appeared as a common characterization. I read the book anyway and urged Commonweal readers to READ THE BOOK too. It is now out in paperback with a new preface.
Among my points to CWL readers: "Comey’s story from childhood through adolescence, education, marriage,
fatherhood, and prosecutorial career is of a person who examines his
conscience. He reports finding, often enough, that his words and deeds
need course correction, apologies, and setting the record straight. His
wife Patrice, in pithy phrases, seems to serve as true north for the
searching needle of his moral compass. In short, he operates in the mode
of David Riesman’s “inner-directed man.” That is not a plus in Trump world, and apparently not in the media scrum that reports on that world."
That was a bit over a year ago. Comey seemed to disappear except for a congressional hearing and a recent NYT op-ed piece. Last night he was on CNN's Town Hall being interviewed by Anderson Cooper and questioned by a group of young people (mostly George Washington U. students). They were succinct. And so was Comey. He was also thoughtful, sharp, and too-the-point on our current situation. In short, he was impressively sane and reassuring in the midst of the Trump-Congress face-off.
He repeats a phrase from the op-ed, Trump "eats people's souls," and in the CNN Interview, he gives a credible account of how that works.
About Trump "eating people's souls", I believe he got that right. Everybody thinks they can play the long game and come out smelling like a rose, or at least not like a barnyard, when he passes from the stage.
ReplyDeleteI respect Comey. But I wish his timing with the emails had been different.
Katherine: What emails are you referring to? Don't know and am curious.
DeleteThese emails: http://time.com/4550453/hillary-clinton-james-comey-fbi-emails/
DeleteOoooppps Forgot about That! What was the whole story, I wonder.
DeleteComey's undergraduate degree at William & Mary was a double major in chemistry and religion. Obviously, those years were followed by a career veer, but I can't think of anyone in my college peer group who did a spread as wide as that. Already there was a one-of-a-kind in Comey.
ReplyDeleteHe matured into what is known in politics as a "Boy Scout," which is good and bad. With a Boy Scout, you know he will never do a dishonest or underhanded thing. You also never know when honesty will cause him to make a bonehead play. As he was with the off-again, on-again announcements about Secretary Clinton. When an honest man had to work with a man whose lifestyle and entire career are based on dishonesty, nothing good could happen.
There are lower level Boy Scouts throughout the government who have been faced with the choice of stay or go and be replaced by people like Bolton, Pompeo and the Boeing lobbyist whom Trump wants to put in a position where the government can pay for his lobbying for Boeing. The latter is what we are getting now that Jim Mattis has gone (too?) quietly from the darkness into the outer light. Mattis would have found a way to prevent simultaneous military action in Venezuela and Iran, which seems be the direction in which Bolton and Pompeo are hot to go.
The trouble with staying so you can prevent worse damage is that unless Trump can "turn" you to do his will he will either fire you or make your life so miserable that you quit. I didn't have any regard or liking for Sessions, but at least he recused himself. And we can see where that got him.
DeleteYeah, that was part of Comey's point in his NYTimes piece. He pointed out that, when the Trumpoleons committed their first big lie (not counting the ones in the inaugural address), the people who found no reason to bail out when they saw Trump promoting his as the most biggest, hugest, humongousest inauguration ever became complicit in a lie. That was Day 1.
DeleteIt is a tempting choice; to stay and prevent worse.
DeleteI have been reading a wad of police procedurals set at first in Berlin in the 30s, moving onto Hitler and Co., post-war Germany, Argentina, Cuba..prisoner of the CIA, etc.
Bernie Gunther is the protagonist who goes from a Berlin detective and a Social Democrat, who gets corralled into being an honest cop for Heydrich and Goebbels, a POW in Russia, watches his former colleague killing Jews, Poles, and Russians in the East...on and on. The point here is that in the last couple of novels just pre- and post-1945, everybody is part of the plot to kill Hitler!! Just like everyone in France was part of the Resistance somehow.
How many Republicans and Trumpistas will claim their bona fide efforts at Resistance in case we ever get through this. Is Senator Richard Burr's subpoena of Trump Jr.a break in the log jam?
Anyone want the police procedurals, let me know; they're certainly not great literature, but somehow I read my way through the whole wad of them...distractions, distractions.
Not everything has to be "improving." My "high brow" project this year is reading novels and memoirs about racial "passing," but I am not above getting distracted with feminist dystopians and Stephen King.
DeleteJean, have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Gilded-Years-Novel-Karin-Tanabe/dp/1501110454?ref=silk_at_search
DeleteNo! Thank you for the rec! If anyone is interested in this topic, Nella Parson's two novels are a good place to start.
DeleteThe NYT Trump-eats-souls editorial is quite a piece. I hope people are paying attention.
ReplyDelete