We Were Ambushed--By Ourselves. Time For Anti-Heroes.

It wasn't much fun to watch.

Robert Mueller didn't want to get up there yesterday and become the whipping post for the loathing that feeds our national divide. Now we know why.

He may have been familiar with the 440-page report attributed to him, but I'm not sure how anyone could have done much better in front of the circling Republican vultures of the House Judiciary Committee. His efforts to follow along with the House investigators--if that's what you want to call them--appeared detached and feebly slow.

I have a copy of the report. It's like watching paint dry to read. It's filled with lawyerese, sentences convoluted to eliminate the kind of counterattacks that the Republicans are fond of trying (notice that, if you were watching, almost none of them were actually devoted to the report itself, nor to the clear and present danger of Russian election interference). But it's essential. I haven't gotten all that far but at times, I beat Mueller to the passages that were quoted by some House members. That started to bother me.

He said, when he actually took the opportunity to discuss his own motivations for taking on this project--to investigate 45's passively permissive default in accepting assistance in his back-door election from the Russians and his active mendacity in trying to cover it up, clear and plain for all to see--that he did it for the challenge. It's obvious now that, at nearly 75, he might have lacked the energy to extend the investigation beyond what he did, and that might have been an unspoken impetus in shutting it down, politics notwithstanding and perpetually evident.

Thing is, he had plenty of help. There were many younger, more involved attorneys hustling to perform their crucial civic duty. He became not much more than a point man.

The New York Times reported as much--hours after Mueller's strange and oddly damaging testimony. It either knew beforehand and didn't want to say, or someone finally leaked information about what actually happened inside the investigation because they didn't want to damage the leak-proof facade built around Mueller and his snooping.

That hurt Mueller and the Democrats, perhaps beyond salvage. For now, it looked like the old "Hannity and Colmes" show, where Sean Hannity's barking and gesticulating often made him look better than Colmes' calm rationality, facts be damned. (One of the first to point this out was none other than pre-Senator Al Franken, who used two books to wade into electoral politics, and whose absence due to his own failure to stand his own ground is hurting Democrats, perhaps daily, because his own formidable investigative abilities have now been silenced.) Some of that might have been headed off had we known beforehand that what we were dealing with in Mueller was the old soldier that, to quote Douglas MacArthur, was starting to fade away. The shock factor was directly attributable to his very observable lack of quickness on the draw, which like it or not reflected upon the competency of the document that so many had come to rely on as nearly biblical in its import.

Republicans won that battle again. They shouldn't, but they do. They grasp the crucial aspect of political theater to shock and distract (45's abilities to do which are widely admired, not condemned). They managed to introduce some old, moldy items--the Steele dossier has dust on it, for heaven's sake--and even tried to diminish the now well-established fact that Mueller didn't let 45 off the hook for obstruction of justice by saying that somehow, the notion of "exoneration" is irrelevant and beyond the powers of the Special Prosecutor's Office. (Does "we still aren't letting him off the hook" work for you, dude? Is "exoneration" too big a word for you?) They utilized their long-expected macho posturing to shout absurd accusations that were too many for Mueller to deal with had he even bothered to do so.

But then, Mueller had also tied his own hands by first, saying that the report spoke for itself; and second, choosing to abide by the Justice Department's reminder that he was to stay within the scope of the report when answering any questions from the House panels. So he couldn't, and wouldn't, wander inside anything that had occurred within his own mind as he and his assistants waded through the tons of information that could, if the House Democrats chose to do so, provide pre-arranged evidence in an impeachment trial.

So in a way, Democrats ambushed themselves. They didn't believe or want to believe Mueller's previous position that reading the report itself would suffice. By implication, bringing him into the hornets' nest yesterday was supposed to represent the spraying of Raid over it, killing off the opposition and driving the rest away. Instead, the nest was stirred and invaded without the best method of eliminating it, and lots of people got stung but good.

Had we known Mueller's more overseer role in this otherwise devastating investigation, the Democrats might have reached out not to him, but asked him instead who among the lawyers he assembled would have shed the best follow-up light possible, perhaps bringing in a known Republican within the group. Maybe they would have concluded that without Mueller, reaching inside the legal bevy might be attacked too well by the other side. Maybe they would have concluded, then, what Mueller told them to do: Just read the report. Let it stand on its own.

But MSNBC's Rachel Maddow didn't know it. Brian Williams didn't know it. Fox News didn't need to know it. If the New York Times and other media knew it and didn't say so, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Their own biases might have gotten in the way of themselves and kept the public from information that might have alleviated the awkwardness of yesterday's display. (I hope Brian Stelter discusses this on CNN's Reliable Sources this Sunday.)

Mueller is a man of unquestioned integrity, Republican sneering aside. But even he didn't have all the answers and wasn't willing to provide anything demonstrably extra to the Democrats who were thirsting for it. Instead, process was once again the wild card to win the poker game over product. The marvelous Adam Schiff saved part of the day at the conclusion of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, but I wonder how many of us had stuck around to finally see Mueller focused and revelatory. That, though, had the feel of the "surge" in Iraq, saving the day from Bush-43's near disaster.

Once again, someone of integrity was asked to drop his own principles to sufficiently get at someone who utterly lacks it. No wonder he failed. We thought he was Superman, but president Lex Luthor, brilliantly sinister, got away again, much like how Captain Kirk keeps reaching for Khan but can't quite grab him. It's clear now that we need some kind of anti-hero or heroes, not quite as washed clean but very effective, to take down this racist, sociopathic purveyor of evil, the worst possible person to actually be president, who nonetheless has enough support around him to inoculate himself against the good guys.

Hmmmmm. The Squad? Deputize them? Turn them loose instead of making excuses for them and treating them as victims? Young, female, idealistic and quite diverse? Nancy's Angels?

Far fetched? I don't know. Got a better idea?

Be well. I'll see you down the road.


Mister Mark