Do X or Not-X, you will regret it
Benjamin Wittes has a long piece on Comey and his book and the emailselectioninvestigationfuss. It’s not a review; he says it would be wrong of him to do a review because he’s not distant enough. It’s reflections on the book rather than a review of it. It includes anecdotes like having lunch with Comey at the FBI cafeteria shortly after Comey became director, and what happened there, and how that fits into the general story of how Comey shifted the culture of the FBI and what people there think of him.
He also takes on this whole question I was talking about yesterday: about having no good options and having the luxury of hindsight that participants don’t have.
My broad point is a simple one: One of the inherent features of no-win situations is that someone loses. Colleagues may understand what you did because they trust you. If you’re lucky, so may your boss. But when something terrible happens, the public will need to assign blame. This is inevitable, and assuming that burden is part of leadership.
Comey and the FBI were in a no-win situation. The no-win we ended up with is Trump. It’s a bitter pill.
Comey’s efforts to break down the cult of the directorship—its successes and its limitations—offer an interesting window into one of the larger themes he struggles with in this book: the effort to insulate the FBI from the perception of intervention in politics when it is investigating both major parties’ presidential nominees during an election campaign. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, turns out to have been even more impossible than eliminating the cult of the directorship. However earnestly one tries, the effort to act apolitically will be understood as politicization. The explanations one then offers of one’s conduct and thinking will be interpreted as ego-driven self-justification. The steps one takes to keep the bureau out of politics in such a situation—however sincere, however open—become politicization.
The problem reminds me of Kierkegaard’s famous passage on marriage:
If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it. . . . Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them and you will also regret that. . . . . Hang yourself, you will regret it, do not hang yourself, and you will also regret that; hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. . . . This, gentlemen, is the sum and substance of all philosophy.
That the steps designed to keep the FBI out of politics—and perceived as out of politics—will themselves be taken as political acts is not a reason not to undertake the effort. The effort itself is a sacred trust. But it is a reason to understand the inherent limits of the undertaking. Charge Hillary Clinton and you will regret it. Don’t charge her and you will regret that too. Explain your reasoning and you will regret it. Don’t explain your reasoning and you will regret it. Inform Congress of your actions immediately before an election, and you will regret that. Don’t inform Congress and you will regret that too. I don’t know if this is the sum and substance of all philosophy, but it is a good rule of thumb: The steps you take to remain apolitical will make you political.
I find that both eloquent and useful.
If it’s really a no win situation then you choose the one with the least destructive outcome since you’ll be under the bus either way. I don’t think that’s the choice that was made here.
I don’t think it was clear which was the least destructive outcome though. That’s the problem. I really don’t think Comey knowingly decided to choose the most destructive outcome.
It does seem to me there is a third choice (though again, with the benefit of hindsight) – treat both candidates equally. If you reveal the Clinton investigation, then reveal the Trump investigation. I understand standard procedure, and so forth, but if you violate standard procedure for one candidate and not the other, it is absolutely impossible to prevent people seeing it as political (especially since it is a violation of procedure – why change procedure for that one candidate? Because the situation was unique. Yes, but….) it can go on forever.
The outcome of that would still have been bad. I think we still would have gotten Trump, because it is obvious that he can kill someone on 5th avenue and have few consequences (he has – an elderly man died in his fire). Clinton, on the other hand, can’t stop to pet a puppy without someone reading something sinister and ugly and ambitious into the act.
But at least Comey would be able to state that the FBI treated them fairly.
It’s not the result we got – but it’s plausibly what Comey was sincerely aiming for. Up until the election returns, based on all the polling, the Trump win was unthinkable. (As a prediction – as a moral outcome, it was always unthinkable.) It sounds as if Comey did not think that he was going to be tipping a balance – he was just minimizing the odor that would follow Clinton’s election and the institutional damage to the FBI from the stupid email business.
In hindsight, obviously, that was a call made under a mistaken assumption at best. But decisions aren’t made in hindsight.
It’s fair to suggest, I think, that he underestimated the potentials of October surprises, particularly in a political environment in which the voting public was in the dark about the possible foreign influence over and in support of one candidate while being saturated in the trivial faux pas of the rival candidate. And it’s also plausible that he was bending so far over backwards to be non-partisan that he was politically tone-deaf in a position and at a time that simply being of minimal political impact required him to be politically sensitive in a way that he was suited to by neither temperament nor training. And all of that assumes he’s of entirely fine character, which may be erring on the side of generosity, without even supposing he may be downright petty or malicious.
The ‘win’ was so narrow. Can we quantify which of the factors was THE issue? Vote suppression/gerrymandering, Russian trolling, Bernie-bro/Stein populism, anti-Clinton mania left over from Ken Starr, anti-Clinton mania churned up by ‘progressives’ like Assange, just plain misogyny. And Comey’s ‘surprise.’
I think what we may be underestimating, though, is how bad the “emails” bullshit could have been if Clinton had won. Especially with a Republican congress.
“I think what we may be underestimating, though, is how bad the “emails” bullshit could have been if Clinton had won. Especially with a Republican congress.”
I know the country would be likely better off with Clinton as President (it certainly would not suffered the wholesale degradation of good will. respect and erosion of institutional norms it has suffered under Trump) but I wonder if she’s partly relieved she did not win. Four (more) years of Republican assholes tearing her down could not have been a prospect to look forward to, President or not. Public service should not have to be that much of a sacrifice. Hell, it isn’t a sacrifice at all for Trump.
Well, I doubt it, since she decided to run in the first place. I can believe she sees that as in the “well one consolation is…” category, but that’s a little different from being relieved.
To be honest I wish she hadn’t run at all. I wish someone else had won the nomination, someone not tied to what Bill Clinton did to the social safety net, and someone not running on the strength of family connections.