Fired FBI Director James Comey’s testimony to a congressional committee raised the stakes in the ongoing political war over the Trump administration’s relationship with Russia. But it was a battle nobody won, however many troubling questions it raised and answers it brought to light.
This is a process the American people must prepare to watch unfold at a pace set by the legal and political institutions and procedures put in place to complete it in careful and orderly fashion.
Frankly, the testimony changed no minds. If you supported President Trump and distrusted Comey before the well-publicized political circus, you likely feel the same afterward. If you dislike the president and believed he should be further investigated, you still feel the same. The testimony did little to change national debate or add any semblance of clarity or, more important, closure.
Certainly President Trump did not come out a winner, on optics or on substance, despite Comey’s stating that the president himself was not personally being investigated. Even if legal, the president’s remarks and actions over time have so lowered the bar for acceptable conduct among supporters in his own party that barely clearing that standard this time around does little to move his presidency forward.
A number of GOP senators share real concern that the investigation now under way by Special Counsel Robert Mueller — and a handpicked prosecuting team with experience tackling Watergate, Enron and the Mafia — will result in at least one scalp. Legislators facing electoral pressure don’t always best reflect the right course of action for a White House, but this White House is as lacking in a power base as the current Congress, and needs all the support it can get.
Yet Comey did not notch a clean win either. While some see him as an hero, for more people the impression is frustrating and mixed. Leading congressional Democrats and both members of the party’s 2016 presidential ticket lambasted Comey before the Russia affair came along. Comey described Trump as a liar, but portrayed the president more as anxious about hastening along the investigation than obstructing it.
Whatever Comey’s feelings about the news media, leading press outlets undercut his position. CNN, for instance, had to retract a bogus blockbuster report that Comey would deny Trump’s claim that he repeatedly told Trump he wasn’t under investigation. While measured and professional in his testimony, Comey — unlike Mueller — remains a politically compromised figure unable to speed to an end the drama around him.
In a way, the American people lost out in this round of Washington conflict the most. Although Trump’s extraordinary election signaled that the nation as a whole was ready to risk shaking things up, his current trouble threatens to end the possibility of bold new approaches to our many festering problems over the next four years.
Trump has made himself a weakened president of a weakened country. This sorry situation is untenable and unacceptable, but we are now all obliged to ride it out.