Friday
In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade explains to femme fatale Bridget O’Shaughnessy why he’s arresting her for the murder of Miles Archer, even though he’s madly in love with her. “When a man’s partner is killed,” he says, “he’s supposed to do something about it.”
That’s essentially what Robert Mueller was telling Congress in Wednesday’s public remarks: “If a man’s country is attacked, you’re supposed to do something about it.” Not dismiss it as a hoax. Not block attempts to find out the truth. Not begin investigating the investigators. Do something about it!
Only he didn’t speak as bluntly as Spade because that’s not Mueller’s way. Instead, he said the attack on our election “deserves the attention of every American” and that “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal-justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.”
As journalist Garret Graf characterized his remarks,
Mueller is, in his own Mueller-like way, screaming for presidential impeachment proceedings. But he’s too respectful to say it as directly as America (and Congress) evidently needs him to say it.
If Mueller thought that simply presenting evidence of the attack and the cover-up would prompt Republicans to rediscover their consciences and Congress to leap into action, then he hasn’t been following recent American politics. As Michael Tomasky pointed out in a New York Times op-ed,
What we saw on display in Mr. Mueller’s nine-minute statement was his often discussed sense of rectitude and propriety. These are admirable attributes, normally. But we might well wonder whether those attributes are what is needed in the age of Donald Trump, or whether the preservation of our democratic institutions demands more.
For that reason, I’m suggesting a literary comparison that would otherwise appear crazily far-fetched: Mueller as Jane Bennet.
It’s far-fetched in part because Jane would probably make the world’s worse prosecutor. The elder Bennet sister is determined to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, not a desirable trait for those tracking down bad guys. Jane even has difficulty finding fault with Wickham when evidence of his perfidy is evident:
[Elizabeth] then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents as far as they concerned George Wickham. What a stroke was this for poor Jane! who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual. Nor was Darcy’s vindication, though grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery. Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and seek to clear the one without involving the other.
“This will not do,” said Elizabeth; “you never will be able to make both of them good for anything. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Darcy’s; but you shall do as you choose.”
Interestingly enough, Attorney General William Barr accused Mueller of Jane-like indecision, saying that Mueller couldn’t come to a conclusion so he had to do it for him. (In reality, Mueller explained Wednesday, Department of Justice guidelines forbid him from indicting the president.) But put that aside and look at the Jane comparison.
Just as Jane believes in people’s inherent goodness, so Mueller appears to believe that people will choose country over party. Operating under the belief that the facts he uncovered speak for themselves, until Wednesday he remained silent, leaving a void. Trump and William Barr immediately rushed in, spinning their own version of the findings.
Jane’s silence exacts its own price. By not telling Bingley more forcefully that she loves him, she almost loses him as others rush in to break up the potential match. (The Bingley sisters and Trump/Barr have more than a little in common.) Not one for self promotion, Jane assumes that, if she truly loves Bingley, that’s enough.
The far more pragmatic Charlotte Lucas points out the fallacy to Elizabeth:
[I]t is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark….Bingley likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.
Like Bingley, much of the American public will remain in the dark if Mueller doesn’t help it on. He therefore would do well to heed Charlotte’s advice and become proactive. His public remarks are one step in the right direction. Testifying before Congress should be the next.
If he does, America may get Jane’s happy ending. Perhaps we will see integrity recognized for what it is, with virtue rewarded and vice overthrown. It’s all very touch and go at the moment, however.
