With the release of former FBI Director James Comey’s book next week, the leftist media is all atwitter about the world according to Comey. A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership reveal Mr. Comey’s personal appraisals of the president, but mostly it’s just another in a long line of ego-driven books designed to extricate oneself from a web of lies in an effort to salvage an already damaged reputation.
Among Comey’s essential observances of the president that the American people have anxiously been awaiting are the size of Mr. Trump’s hands, the length of his tie and the color of skin under the president’s eyes. Yes, real blockbuster stuff here, folks.
As well, Mr. Comey can’t help from musing aloud about the state of President Trump’s marriage, his height and last but not least -- his character. Indeed, the man whose chief skill seems to be lying with a straight face claims that the president is the one who is “untethered to the truth.” Any psychiatrist worth his salt might call the former FBI director’s written reflections a classic case of psychological projection.
The Left is All-In for Comey
Were this a poker game, the leftist media would be piling up the chips in the center of the table. The New York Times review of A Higher Loyalty is headlined, “James Comey Has a Story to Tell. It’s Very Persuasive.” In a high-brow review bursting with hubris – something the Times does better than almost everyone on the planet save perhaps George Will – they smugly wax:
“…Trump and Comey: They are as antipodean as the untethered, sybaritic Al Capone and the square, diligent G-man Eliot Ness in Brian De Palma’s 1987 movie “The Untouchables”; or the vengeful outlaw Frank Miller and Gary Cooper’s stoic, duty driven marshal Will Kane in Fred Zinnemann’s 1952 classic “High Noon.”
For those who haven’t watched “High Noon” in the last 50 years, Frank Miller is a bitter and rancorous outlaw just freed from his prison cell ready to even the score with the U.S. Marshall who put him in the pokey. Translation: Comey is the upstanding lawman and Trump the vicious outlaw. There’s the Times for you.
But that’s not as unscrupulous as The Lawman’s own analogy of Trump. He likens the president’s insistence on a "silent circle of assent" to the Mafia code of silence. The implication is that Trump is the Capo di tutti capi charged with running his personal Cosa Nostra with an iron fist. Comey gives the reader the impression that a Trumpian world is filled with little hit men ready to do the Godfather’s bidding. Has the former FBI director taken to heart the words of Don Corleone who said, "A friend should always underestimate your virtues, and an enemy overestimate your faults."?
Unsurprisingly James Comey writes as he speaks: as a haughty self-satisfied superior who lives in a black and white world. In this self-assured space, Comey is the sheriff wearing the white Stetson proudly above his halo, while Trump is relegated to the dark underbelly of a seedy world filled with outlaws and desperados. It is a shockingly adolescent worldview.
Dénouement
Of course, the moral high ground can be a difficult place to reside. It requires much more than Mr. Comey seems capable of – especially here in The Swamp. Comey has long been a Swamp-dweller of the first order and has admirably learned the tricks of the trade: act superior, put your failings off on others, take zero responsibility for anything in your life and above all, arrogantly disdain those who oppose you.
In a way, Comey is more of a cafone – an embarrassment to himself and others -- than he is a man in the white hat. He’s almost single-handedly brought forth a sense that the FBI is nothing more than another partisan hack and left a messy trail behind him for others to clean up thereby decimating public trust in the nation’s chief law enforcement agency.
Perhaps Mr. Comey could have done us all a favor and been better off had he learned to heed another of The Godfather’s quips, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.”
