There’s no question that FBI Director James Comey’s reasoning for not charging Hillary Clinton and her staff is, at best, highly questionable. As our John Podhoretz noted yesterday in quoting former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy’s analysis, his reasoning wasn’t logical and her “gross negligence” should render any discussion about her intent irrelevant. We can argue till doomsday about whether any other person who behaved in this fashion would have been hauled into court. But what is not debatable is that Comey’s analysis of her conduct was a unique event in our political history.
Never before has a major party presidential nominee received this kind of damning denunciation by the nation’s leading law enforcement officer. He has shown her to be cavalier about protecting national security and having consistently lied about it. Under normal circumstances—which is to say, if she was not a former First Lady and secretary of state who is already the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee—this litany of misconduct and mendacity would rule out the object of such a dressing-down for any consideration for the presidency.
All of which is to say that, as much as they have spent the last 24 hours attacking Comey’s judgment, Republicans should also be acknowledging he has given them a gift that will keep giving until Election Day. The question is, can their nominee avoid stepping on the clear message they wish to convey about Clinton’s unfitness for high office with wild statements, insults, or lies of his own that will balance out any public outrage about the person the Democrats are nominating?
Don’t bet on it.
The Trump campaign did quickly put up a Facebook post that has already gotten over seven million views and should serve as a model for what Republicans should be saying from now on. The most effective GOP ads will be those that contrast Comey’s statements with Clinton’s various disingenuous denials and that is exactly what was done here.
Trump also hit on the right themes in his speech last night, in which he harped on Bill Clinton’s plane hopping on the tarmac to schmooze with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, as well as reminding voters that the treatment accorded Hillary in this case illustrates the notion that the system is rigged.
But Trump is still Trump, and he is as incapable of staying on message as he is of modesty, good manners, or consistent policy positions. A little bit of the robotic repetition of talking points for which Marco Rubio was justly mocked during the primaries would be in order for Trump. But he is too undisciplined and too eager to entertain audiences to do that.
The fact that the lead of most stories about the speech was his praise of Saddam Hussein’s killing of terrorists has surely left the rational actors on his campaign in a state of despair. That Trump’s assessment of Saddam was absurd—since, as our Noah Rothman pointed out earlier, a man who pays bounties to Palestinians who killed Israelis and Jews was not a foe of terrorism—is beside the point. Trump shouldn’t have been talking about anything but Clinton, her lies, her paranoia about transparency, her sense of entitlement, and her attitude toward national security that makes it clear she can’t be trusted with the nation’s secrets. But instead, he was meandering all over the place, reminding us of his own problems.
Every time Trump opens his mouth it’s a reminder to independents, mainstream Republicans, and everyone else there are good arguments to be made that the only viable alternative to Clinton is just as, if not more, flawed than she. We’ve never before had a presidential election with two such unpopular and distrusted major party nominees. Both ought to be unelectable. But one of them is going to win, so the question is which of them can be portrayed as even more unsuited for high office than the other. Until now, that was clearly Trump. But Comey’s statement has objectively complicated that.
To the extent that they can, if they are actually serious about winning this election, Trump campaign officials need to realize that their only hope is to get him to shut up and let Clinton hang herself. If even after yesterday, Clinton must still be seen as something of a favorite, it is because, unfortunately for Republicans, that is the ultimate mission impossible.
