Jim Comey, apparently, is the most powerful man in the world.
I mean, honestly: who helped decide this past Presidential election more? Who is now in a position to provide the evidence that will get the man who won it removed? Who said, at his testimony this week "I thought maybe if the memo got out, we could get a Special Prosecutor"? And whose leaked memo did precisely that? And not only that, seems to have gotten him the Special Counsel he actually wanted all along, Bob Mueller.
Outside of J. Edgar Hoover, I'm not sure we've had a head of the FBI who managed to place himself so centrally at the nexus of law and politics and power in this country... and in that sense, bear with me, Donald Trump firing him, while idiotic and venal, may have achieved a goal that may never have been achieved by anyone else for years: Comey is no longer wielding immense power in a way that guarantees he cannot be touched.
What was remarkable at Comey's hearing with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was just how chastened he seemed - which is to say, not much, but just, somehow, enough. No longer ennobled by his Cloak of Official Power, Comey teed up on his new sworn enemy (he's clearly no fan of the President, not now) and provided a series of exceedingly direct, and even revealing answers of the sort he'd likely have avoided were he still Director of the FBI. Power, after all, lies not in what you know, but how and when you let others know. And Comey's power, now, rests in letting the knowledge run free, not in carefully hoarding it.
The terrifying thing, after all, is how boxed in those who would nominally be in charge of Comey were, or would be, were he still in charge. President Obama had myriad calls to relieve Comey, and seemed, by the end of his term to have realized the buyer's remorse of appointing him to begin with. But there was no way Obama coul fire him without looking like a partisan protecting Hillary Clinton. And had Clinton been elected, she certainly would have been in a similar box. And then there's Trump, who should have understood that while he might have been able to fig leaf firing Comey right upon taking office as a "necessary housecleaning" would look atrocious, and dumb, to fire Comey as the drip drip drip of revelations began regarding Flynn, Russia and a hose of questionable contacts and acts by his campaign and nascent Administration (actions and contacts, which, despite conservative mythmaking, seem to clearly point to a major, troubling level of meddling in US affairs by a foreign power).
That Trump's firing of Comey will likely lead to his undoing - impeachment, resignation, charges, jail time... whatever - doesn't negate the serendipitous side effect of separating Comey from the absoliute power that was clearly getting out of hand. The kind of power that had him overruling a sitting Attorney General in the conducting of the Clinton investigation - behavior he continues to justify, even as he admits that there's literally no there there with the case. The kind of power that left Presidents beholden to his whims. The kind of power that made people quake when he merely said "I cannot confirm or deny..." whether vaguely made allegation of wrongdoing was under investigation.
There's a healthy, even necessary conversation we ought to be having about this kind of power. About the problematic history of the FBI, and the uneasy compromise we've made that projects the shadow of Hoover and his tactics over American life long after he's left the stage. "Director of the FBI" is the federal government's strangest made up role - there's nothing in the Constitution that suggests a federal role in law enforcement - and we accept, somehow, that it's real and deserves to be left with virtually no direct control... and we wonder, often, how that power winds up being corrupting.
Without Comey, we're avoiding that conversation. Any Trump appointee - assuming, absurdly, one can be confirmed - will be damaged goods, an instant question mark, an easy scapegoat. The power of the FBI willl be checked, in part, because Comey ran amok, and because without him, this Administration's options to run amok seem worse. We will not have Comey's FBI, but we will want an FBI that's strong. And in that contradiction lies so much about who we are as a nation. The conversation can wait... but it shouldn't. We'll wait, and somewhere, down the road, we'll probably get another person drunk on power who can't quite be stopped. Just don't pretend we don't know that this can happen. Or why.
As for Trump, our hopes really do rest on... well, Jim Comey. Not just on those revelations he shared and what is left to reveal, but the discipline and effectiveness of the organization he shaped and now leaves behind. It rests in all of us - the ones not in the tank for Trump - continuing to insist that questions be asked, laws be followed, and justice be swift and sure. He may not be the ally we wanted... but he is the most powerful man in the world. Stay thirsty, my friends.
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