He’ll never admit it publicly, but when President Biden looks up the street toward DOJ, he sees Garland, all attorney, no general.
Nine months in, the hope 81 million had in DOJ’s prosecuting the head of the Trump criminal enterprise for obstructing justice and fomenting insurrection is dead. Like Lincoln’s McClellan, Garland is about his public esteem, not the fight (though we have no record of his ever referring to his president as a “well-meaning baboon”.) Small wonder Republicans said nice things about him during his confirmation; they have a feral sense for, and enjoy flaying, the weak and gun-shy.
What does Garland want to achieve? The photo of him facing a committee of Congress does not need a thousand words to tell us that the probability of justice for Trump and Trumpers is not a priority. Appearances can deceive, of course, but not when combined with Garland’s expressed concern about not wanting to radicalize the January 6 rioters being prosecuted, his reputation for being an “institutionalist” (code for, My job is to protect federal prosecutors and the presidency unconditionally), and his infatuation with being seen, especially by Republicans, as apolitical.
Absent anything memorable from him on the justice front, the public is left to wonder: what is Garland (not) doing and why? Aside from the we-will-follow-the-law bromide he served the Senate in his confirmation hearing, we’ve heard nothing that suggests an understanding of the current political dynamic, of the reality that the opposition will criticize him regardless and continue its relentless assault. What motivates someone who gave rise to the great expectation that he would use the law to blunt the threat that Trump and his 74 million followers pose to the rest of us, but who has chosen not to?
He limits his public statements to platitudes. This reduces us to tea-leaf reading and speculation over what he’s really up to. Start with his face. A regular white-haired old guy you see at his grandkid’s swim meet. Respectable lawyer’s coif; glasses, inevitable after decades of reading. The mouth turned down at the corners suggests Droopy (1943 creation of the brilliant Tex Avery), but even he didn’t have what Garland has: the half-open eyes of a stiff at the morgue, which the coroner hasn’t bothered to close even after kin identified the body.
These are not the eyes of someone who even rises to the level of milquetoast. Garland’s eyes hint at something more disconcerting, a person removed from and oblivious to context, an automaton who fails (refuses? is unable?) to calibrate and take into account that Trumpism and the criminality it represents have put the system itself at risk. We know that self-awareness is not a trait common to automatons. But dumb Garland is not. He knows the law. He also knows the evidence that’s been accumulating since January 2017 when Trump took office.
So, what gives? The most obvious, if unspectacular, explanation is that he is mind-bogglingly preoccupied with his reputation as an apolitical AG. Yes, delusion and self-absorption are twins. But at the highest level of a purported democracy, this is suicidal — if we want a chance at law-based government. When prosecution decisions become subordinate to an individual’s quest to restore the reputation of a government department — the ultimate exercise in abstraction; the public knows little and cares even less about his motivation — despite the facts and the law, the effect is the opposite of what was intended.
Garland labors to convince Republicans his decisions are pristinely above politics. This is too glib a cover story in that it confuses prosecuting someone for their politics with prosecuting criminal acts committed by politicians. That confusion, though, does not arise out of his inability to tell the difference. It is, instead, a function of a McClellanesque aversion to the fight and the inevitable assault on his saintly reputation it would bring. Forced to choose, he will reject the assertion of lawful power against miscreants threatening the State. In doing so he threatens us all.
If nothing else, this proves the inadequacy of the saint analogy. Saints were saintly because they took the rocks and arrows for the cause. Certainly, to suffer willingly is selflessness to the extreme, but it was intentional, an in-your-face message to tormentors: You cannot break me; there are greater matters. Garland offers a twist on saintliness. He would rather incur the wrath of Democrats — presumably knowing they have no choice — than have to endure his tormentors’ false claim that he is persecuting their standard-bearer for political reasons.
Does Garland expect the Republican half of the country to be grateful to him for letting Trump skate? If so, it would be proof of his cluelessness about what he and the other half of the country are up against. More likely, as his lifeless inward-looking eyes tell us, he’ll not let even that bit of calculation distract him from the greater cause: the metronomic, clerk-like and, ultimately, ineffective-where-we-need-it-most administration of justice that avoids the risk of mud on the uniform.
As Lincoln with McClellan so Biden with Garland: when it comes to insurrections, non-narcissist generals are a better choice.
