Mr. McGuire Goes to the House UPDATE

Watching the House Intelligence Committee hearings with Acting DNI Joseph McGuire was instructive and disturbing. It brought full-force, at least to my attention, the trap in which our political leaders and our political system is caught.

Some observations:

1. Acting director DNI McGuire, a recently retired military officer, appears to be a person of integrity and of patient good humor. But as “acting,” he was only a few days into the job when the whistle blower document landed on his desk. His initial actions—consulting the White House counsel and the Justice Dept. and AG Barr—can be explained perhaps by his “military” mind set and his first days in office. But as several Democrats argued, this was unfortunate and unethical. Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a press conference implied that his actions could be subject to legal action. McGuire did his best to explain, sometimes to defend his actions and sometimes to defer a direct answer. Obviously he could never now be confirmed in office, even in the unlikely event of Trump nominating him. 

Yet given this unique “orientation,” to the job and the ways of Washington, he might make an astute head of the national intelligence office in the Trump era. Instead, he has been trapped in the Trump penchant for making every appointment an “acting” so that he or she is dependent on him.

2. Grand-standing by members of both parties reinforces the image of self-serving (and pompous) careerist. By approaching their responsibilities to either defend Trump or attack him, many House members made spectacles of themselves, especially those whose prosecutorial skills hyped the temperature without adding to information or insight. Most are behaving for the benefit of a partisan media and their own next election campaign. If they thwart the obvious thrust of their opponents questioning of McGuire, so much the better. What a show of character to pass on his or her turn for a House member to say, thank you, Mr. Chairman, my questions have already been asked.

And yet, they too are trapped in appearing to be-in-the-know and on top of the issues. The “evidence”—an unofficial transcript and the whistleblowers actual charges—appeared within a day and an hour of the hearing, House Members could hardly have had time to absorb the information much less consult with others better versed in “intelligence” lingo and rules, to say nothing of ethics.

3. Mueller’s Report was mentioned in passing; perhaps it  seemed to have no immediate import for McGuire’s testimony. Yet, what we know so far about Trump and Ukraine is very much in the train of Mueller’s findings and conclusions. Trump as candidates and as president surrounds himself with willing accomplices. Whether he asks them to break the law or whether he knows they are upending norms and breaking the law, they participate in the Trump bubble, a culture of lying, cheating, exaggeration, and breaking the law. Trump and his entourage are willing and able, even enabled, to break the norms that keep our political system intact and functioning so long as the House of Representatives misses the mark and fails to connect the dots, intelligently and persuasively--at least enough to boot Trump from office, or failing that to keep him from a second term.

UPDATE: A little known factoid: Joseph Maguire and the man scurrying around doing Trump's bidding, Rudolf Giuliani, are both graduates of Manhattan College in NYC--a Christian Brothers school.