That was a remarkable rush Wednesday to hear what one wanted to hear in Robert Mueller's brief and barely news-making remarks.
My headline would be: "Mueller finally speaks, says he'd rather not speak again."
The left's near-euphoria came from Mueller finally mouthing in person the words that had already been entered into his report--that he would have declared that President Trump did not obstruct justice if he had been able to satisfy himself of the truth of that.
Aha, he's plainly saying that Trump did commit a crime. And he is clearly signaling to Congress that it should impeach. Or so declared Democratic partisan after Democratic partisan.
My personal suspicion is that Mueller indeed thinks that. But I haven't shared any six-packs with him lately to try to get his guard down.
And my mind-reading is not fact. Nor is yours. Nor is Trump's that he stands exonerated.
Lucky is what Trump is, that Mueller is a fairer and better man than, say, Kenneth Starr.
Here is the fact, both of Mueller's report and verbal statement: He was bound by Justice Department policy that he couldn't indict a sitting president. So he did not go there. But he could have declared the president clearly innocent on obstruction of justice, but, based on his investigation, he could not.
That he came out and said that in person doesn't advance the clear substance of the pre-existence of the statement. It was news before. It's repetition now.
Mueller said he did not want or intend to say more. He said that, if pressed to testify to Congress, he would proceed as if his report was his testimony and answer only in the limits of that report.
He's a congressional resource, not an advocate. That's what he was saying.
Congress is the appropriate political body, and he is not a political being but an investigating one.
In other words, let's say there came a subpoena to Mueller that led to a congressional question along this line: "Hey, Bob, just between you and me and the world, what do you really think about whether we ought to impeach this clown?"
And Mueller would say, "Whatever I have to say that might be relevant to that inquiry is in the report. My job was to investigate and report, not share personal opinion. Congress must make its own determinations based on my report and any other facts it has gleaned by its own investigation."
Democrats are rushing to say, "But, wait, Mueller is contradicting Attorney General William Barr."
The issue there is that Barr said in a news briefing that he had asked Mueller several times if he was saying, by his I-can't-clear-him phrase, that he believed Trump had indeed committed a crime. He said Mueller had replied that he did not make that determination.
It is entirely possible that Mueller couldn't clear Trump on the one hand, but, on whether he was making an affirmative case of criminal wrongdoing on the other hand, never got to the point of doing that because, by Justice Department policy, it was outside the scope of what he could do.
Nobody would be lying. Everyone would be phrasing with careful minimal precision.
Lawyers have told me that Mueller, had he chosen, could have acknowledged his lack of authority to indict Trump but concluded and reported that the president had obstructed justice. But Mueller is a straight arrow, a pro, and he knew the important judgment would be that of Congress, based on facts that it was his job to reveal.
Mueller declined to say, "I can't indict him, but, gosh, darn, I sure wish I could."
That would be something less than professional. A criminal charge is to be made and supported, not wished for.
Yet partisans have been reacting with their hearts to Mueller's exasperating insistence on operating from his brain.
There are enough written words in Mueller's report for Congress to move forward with articles of impeachment against Trump on obstruction of justice.
But there is enough mitigation in the report to make a practical political decision that the goods aren't quite there to compel impeachment knowing the Senate would acquit.
I continue to rely on two maxims, one being, "When in doubt, don't," and the other being, "Use a little common sense."
If the case for impeaching a president is not sufficiently clear and compelling to remove all doubt, then don't do it, especially in the context of the common sense that impeachment would never amount to removal from office but could amount to a political backlash with an epic presidential choice awaiting us in 17 months.
It seems enough for a Democratic presidential candidate to point to Trump in a debate and say, "We had an eminently fair special counsel tell us he couldn't say this man didn't obstruct justice."
Then let's all vote.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/30/2019