Sad, But True

To the shock of my liberal friends and the amazement of my conservative friends, I find myself - using some really twisted ivory-tower logic - agreeing with President Trump.

James Comey should have been fired.

Now, before I explain how I got into this corner, let me add that he was fired in the worst possible way, at the worst possible time, and the consequences will be bad, really bad, for the Republican Party and for many of the GOP office-holders who hope they can just stand on the balcony, looking down on the mess, and hope they can avoid getting dragged down into the chaos.

There. A  nice, run-on sentence with a mixed metaphor and a lack of coherence. I feel better already.

But, first the sad truth.

James Comey, the former head of the FBI, has been playing out a classic Greek tragedy. We’ll call the show “Hubris in the 21st century.”

It’s not that hard to see. Comey, like a lot of men and women who end up in powerful positions, found himself making a really classic mistake. He thought that he was more important than his organization.

It plays out all over the country, all the time, and often in ways too small and too isolated to be really noticed. A school principal who pretty much runs his or her own show, over-reaches with discipline and random directions, and unleashes enough chaos that eventually parents - or, worse, the media - start asking the school board about the problems, and the principal is gone.

Or the lawyer or doctor in a one-man practice (term of art, it could be a woman as well) who knows what has worked for years, and decides that they know exactly what to do all the time. When a disaster comes, they are amazed that it started with a little problem that just got bigger and bigger, and they ignored it because, well, because they could, and they were in charge.

Or an elected official who overstays his welcome, and runs for four or six or eight terms, until they are shocked, shocked when they are rejected. I’ve also covered lots of school boards that had to deal with old buildings that needed some repairs, and were amazed to see their $50 million bond issue go down in flames. A new school board usually passed a $35 million bond issue two years later.

So, what does this have to do with Comey? Well, he put his own ego ahead of his job, his organization, and the clear-cut if unwritten policies of the FBI.

Remember them? Don’t talk about ongoing investigations. Don’t make it worse by continuing to talk, then to talk some more. Don’t tell Congressmen you are investigating a candidate for president - let’s call her Hillary - and then say the investigation is over, to  correct that mistake. Then say it may not be over after all. And then say, once again, you found nothing wrong.

And do it just a couple of days before the election. Bad timing. Bad decisions all around.

There is just a bit of irony in the fact that timing seems to be a thread running through the Trump administration. A bad firing here that seems to imply that he wants to stop an investigation into his Russian ties, a bad timing there that seems to imply he wants to stop an investigation into Russian hacking of the election. More bad timings about random things, oh say that a carrier task force is sailing toward Korea when it is actually going the other way. He could have waited until it turned around, or perhaps been a little clearer and less dramatic. Oh, well. It may be Hubris.

But, in any case, we have Comey getting involved in something he should have been able to avoid with a simple “no comment” or by just not saying anything. But, he thought he was bigger than his job, and likely thought he was bigger than his organization. 

“L’Etat, c’est moi”as Louis XIV is thought to have said - the state, it is I.

“L’FBI, c’est moi” just doesn’t work.

But, here’s another delightful French quote, not heard nearly as much. “Je m’en vais, mais l’Etat demeurera toujours.” That was the Marquis de Dangeau, and it roughly translates as “I am going away, but the State will always remain.” 

Words for Comey to reflect on, and words for our President to think about.

Oh, those Ivory Towers cast long shadows.