That was a brilliantly revealing front-page article Friday on the reactions by Arkansas congressional delegates and aspirants to the corruption intimately surrounding and seemingly including Donald Trump.
Everyone was vividly defined, beginning with the only Arkansas official in Washington who offers any confidence or independent command.
Credit where due--that's U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, who managed at least to say that last week's jury conviction of Paul Manafort and guilty plea of Michael Cohen demonstrate that Trump had surrounded himself with people with whom Cotton wouldn't have surrounded himself.
That's bravery by contemporary Republican congressional standard.
Being somewhat clever, Cotton said the developments indicate the swamp is being drained in Washington. He managed thereby to invoke a theme of his party's unfortunate leader while leaving unsaid that the swamp in this case was rising above the very neck of his party's unfortunate leader.
U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford of the 1st District, who seldom talks to the media, revealed why. He consented ill-advisedly and argued that last week's developments revealed that special counsel Robert Mueller was off the rails and needed to wrap it up because he had meandered much too long.
A couple of reality-grounded observations, if I might: Ken Starr stayed at it for six years on an investigation of a silly failed Arkansas land deal, hanging around until he caught Bill Clinton receiving oral sex. Mueller has been at the Russian cyber-invasion investigation, probably more important and complex than a north Arkansas land deal, for a mere 15 months.
And Crawford needs to be informed that Cohen's guilty plea was entered not to Mueller, but to the regular U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan, to which Mueller referred information on Cohen that did not directly affect his assignment.
Cohen directly affects Mueller's assignment only now, and only because he has accused the preposterous Russian-endorsed second-place president of directing him to make payments that amounted to illegal campaign contributions.
Crawford should re-lower his profile forthwith. His Republican congressional colleagues from Arkansas could show him how.
At least Crawford wasn't a scaredy-cat like ... get this ... John Boozman, Steve Womack, Bruce Westerman and French Hill, all of whom couldn't find time to make themselves available to assess the foundational crumbling of their beloved president.
The most amusing scaredy-cat was French Hill. He's under serious challenge from Democrat Clarke Tucker in the 2nd District. He is committed strategically to trying to coast on his passive mathematical probability without risking any more engagement than absolutely necessary with Tucker or reporters.
The article Friday reported that Hill didn't have time to comment, but provided a written statement.
I'm a remarkably fast typist. But even I couldn't write something faster than I could say it.
Hill's hesitance to comment verbally and fluidly in answer to live questions was hardly a matter of time. It was a matter of nerve, of Hill's not having any.
Oh, and the written statement that Hill produced ... that was a real gem. He wrote--or had written for him for delivery to his bunker for nervously studied approval--that no one is above the law but that the week's developments had uncovered no Russian collusion.
That's perhaps because investigations are linear. You don't get to the end until you start from the beginning and work your way forward.
The Hill crutch of "no collusion" is like Bill Clinton's saying along the path of Starr's investigation that he was sorry Jim Guy Tucker got caught up in the affair, but that no one is above the law, and that, by the way, at least Starr hadn't uncovered any oral sex in the Oval Office.
Appropriately, the article sought the reactions of the Democratic challengers to these Republican incumbents, whether scaredy-cat or uninformed.
Crawford's challenger, a smart and amiable young KIPP school educator from Helena named Chintan Desai, knows he's a long shot. So he just went ahead and said we need to look at impeachment.
Hayden Shamel, running against Westerman in the 4th, and Josh Mahony, running against Womack in the 3rd, more properly said the situation was one of broken politics but that impeachment might not be ripe just yet.
The one clearly competitive Democratic candidate, Tucker in the 2nd, needs to cop a few independent right-of-center votes if he is to win. So he said the week's events showed that Washington was corrupt and needed new blood and that Congress must stop abdicating its responsibility as a presidential check and balance. He didn't call for impeachment, but for letting the facts lead where they may.
What will net Tucker those few vital independent right-of-center votes is the notion that rascals need to be thrown out and Trump needs to be more closely tended.
Hill won't get much presidential babysitting done from deep in that scaredy-cat's bunker where he can't even find time to meow.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 08/26/2018