James Comey firing shows he was a lousy politician

It’s a carnival, and there’s a monster on the midway

James Comey is a good lawyer. He was a good judge. Everyone says so, so it must be true. But he’s a lousy politician, and he grew too big for his britches. He forgot who he was, and paid dearly.

He’s a lot like the man who sacked him. Both Judge Comey and President Trump sometimes think they know more than they actually do, and both need someone close at hand, a daughter or a wife, to tell them not to say and do foolish things. Above all, both of them talk too much. One of them even tweets too much.

They both think the other is nuts. Mr. Comey, according to The Hill, the Capitol Hill political daily, told colleagues as early as March, two months into the Trump presidency, that the president was “crazy” for suggesting that Barack Obama had wiretapped him in the waning days of the Obama era. Actually, Mr. Trump had never used the word “wiretap,” but the word has been used so often in the media that he might as well have. There’s lots of fake facts floating around Washington.

Then, according to The New York Times, he told associates that the president was acting “outside the realm of normal.” For his part, the president told his aides that “something was wrong with Comey” two days before he sacked him. But everybody in town is a little bit crazy, or no one would survive.

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