We don't need those little arrows for this column. We can stipulate, surely, that everyone's arrow pointed down in that lost week we just endured.
The American political performance plunged so thoroughly and decisively that an attorney general who performed his job not in service to the concept of justice but for the ego gratification of a madman president came closer than anyone, which was not very, to an upward arrow.
Attorney General William Barr did not misstate special counsel Robert Mueller's report. He simply did not.
Barr summarized in his early public statement that Mueller found no criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia and that Mueller reached no conclusion on obstruction of justice.
That's accurate. Terse. But accurate.
Once you've declared that your elite special investigation found no crime in one area and chose not to assert any crime in the other, then any additional discussion amounts to the sunken section of a souffle.
Barr gets his arrow down for two disgraces. One was continued general prostitution to Trump. The other was his specific cowardice in defying a subpoena to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and face extended questioning from persons smarter than the politicians, meaning staff lawyers.
The United States could use an attorney general who could and would stand up to questioning from congressional staff attorneys.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, a political novice, a simple aggrieved citizen, managed to do it. She bravely faced a lawyer brought in specially to discredit her for daring to challenge a preppy right-wing beer-lover on his way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
As for Mueller, alas, the Eagle Scout disappointed.
His credibility had soared in large part because he avoided any partisan traps by keeping his mouth shut and letting his work speak for itself.
Then, last week, the news broke that he'd walked into a partisan trap.
It turns out he got so offended by Barr's summarizing his report with extreme succinctness that he sent Barr a letter complaining. He protested that the lack of context had led to misleading press reports that ill-served a valid public understanding.
All of a sudden Mueller was concerned about the public perception, not the reality, of his report.
He specifically would have preferred the early release of his own broader summary. His own text would have explained that, OK, maybe we're not saying Trump committed obstruction, but we're not saying he didn't, either. We're citing several obstruction-y things that are complicated.
Oh, please. The report is now out. We can read it for ourselves. And we can see that Mueller was concerned about the Justice Department's policy that a sitting president can't be indicted. But we can see that he was cognizant of other complications, such as that there was no underlying crime and that a president has the right to fire the people this one fired out of hostility to the investigation.
While Mueller was indeed hamstrung by the policy against presidential indictment, he was not forbidden from declaring that he had found a crime, indictable or not.
He could have concluded that criminal obstruction occurred and invited the Trump-defending excuse for an attorney general to cover that up. Or do something about it.
What, pray tell, is it that Mueller is seeking now--public-relations credit for almost finding the president a criminal?
As for congressional Democrats, they typically over-reacted and fell on their faces.
The Senate Judiciary Committee before which Barr condescended to appear Wednesday was infested by three Democratic presidential candidates--Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris--none of whom laid a glove on the smarter, nimbler Barr.
The Democratic wannabes asked futile and hostile questions that Barr deflected and that produced no new information. But the mere performance of their asking gave these low-polling candidates quick tweets and opportunities for rhetorical flourishes from the campaign stump.
House Democrats whom Barr snubbed out of fear of staff lawyers put an empty chair and ceramic chicken at the House Judiciary Committee's witness table. It was not an original demonstration of derision. I'd seen it done by adolescents.
The leading mainstream media over-reacted as well. The news of Mueller's letter was neither a special report nor a blockbuster. It was a curiosity, both in regard to what the letter said and why Mueller felt obliged to write it and almost assuredly see it leaked.
There is but one credible manner for congressional Democrats and the leading mainstream media to proceed.
It is to obsess much less on Barr's disgracing himself as Trump's political advocate and on Mueller's odd and regrettable whining about context and perception.
It's to probe further into the Mueller report's substantive detail and frustrating lack of conclusion.
It's work that could be done primarily by investigative reporters and congressional staff lawyers, meaning, in the latter case, those whom Trump's attorney general seems to fear much more than he fears inept Democratic presidential candidates.
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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 05/05/2019