A bipartisan bungler

Americans forget their corruption in order to savour their innocence. When Republicans and Democrats are struggling to find ways forward and the presidency is all over the road, the combat of ex-FBI director James Comey and reality television star Donald Trump is almost heartening. For, despite partisan division and the rise of China, the drama of the American psyche survives. The puritan grips the porn-ographer, and the spirit of the civil servant contends with the flesh of the president.

The excitement over last Sunday’s ABC News interview with Comey was almost as much as that around Michael Woolf’s Fire and Fury. So much has happened since that worthy mishmash of secondhand gossip hit the remainder bins in January. At the time, Woolf claimed that his revelations would bring down the Trump presidency. Yet Trump is, in the words of another eccentrically coiffed entertainer, Elton John, still standing, and better than he ever did.

Comey also has a book to promote. It is called A Higher Loyalty, to remind us which character he plays in the Manichaean combat. Jacob against the Angel, Bunyan’s Christian against Apollyon the Fiend, and now Comey the attention-grubber against Trump the pussy-grabber. True to casting, Comey called Trump ‘morally unfit’ to be the President. ‘A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it — that person’s not fit to be President of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement.’