Watching Attorney General William Barr testify in the Senate reminded me of another Attorney General. Like Barr, he had a distinguished reputation as a lawyer.  He had no reputation as an ideologue and famously said after the election of the President he served, “watch what we do not what we say.”  He too wound up in front of a Congressional committee providing half-truths as answers to questions from not only lawmakers but Committee counsels from both sides of the aisle, a proposition rejected by our current AG.

That AG was, of course, John Mitchell who, in his career as a distinguished bond lawyer, created the “moral obligation” for public securities that led to a lucrative practice as one of America’s preeminent bond counsels.  He brought our later President, Richard Nixon, into his firm in 1963 after Nixon had lost the race for Governor of California and managed his successful campaign for President in 1968 as well as his re-election.  Mitchell wound up going to jail for his part in Watergate and, as I recall, lying about it.

So now we watch the dissembling of the Republican Party as they meekly turn over control of the Congressional prerogatives granted in Article 1 of the Constitution to a President most of them found unacceptable.  Yet, as our old friend, Lindsay Graham, points out, you can be in the conversation by being a Trump loyalist, or you can be out in the cold if you are not.  What is missing from this analysis is the price to pay to be in the conversion.  With this President, it requires abandoning your principles if you had any to begin with.  Perhaps above the Oval Office, we need a sign similar to the one from Dante, “All ye that enter here, abandon all hope…as well as your reputation.”  As William Barr is about to find out, Donald Trump is the human stain.