Whole sight....

I was very critical of the DOJ letter on what areas Mueller could not speak to in public testimony, based on various areas of privilege.  When I found out Mueller had requested that letter, I was even more dubious about his testimony.

I was wrong.

Mueller is using that letter, implicitly and occasionally explicitly, to refuse to answer GOP questions that wander off into conspiracy theories and la-la land.  The Democrats are using this hearing to make clear what the Mueller report actually says, v. the version promoted by William Barr ("NO COLLUSION!  NO OBSTRUCTION!"), a version that is now clearly a tissue of lies.  And Mueller is carefully refusing to be a partisan in any manner, a posture he was criticized for before this hearing, a posture that is proving to make him a better witness than he would be otherwise, and giving his terse answers the authority of final judgment.

Mueller is not St. George and, much as I despise him and think him a danger to the republic, Trump is not the dragon.  Mueller is right to understand it is the system that must work, not a knight on a white horse.  That's how we got Trump:  expecting one person to do everything for us, whatever group "us" is.

This hearing is showing that Mueller did indeed turn the rock over, and did indeed find all the ugly things going on there that needed to be exposed.  But it is still up to the system to clean out the garden; and that may well mean the voters acting decisively in November a year from now.

Even we the voters can't expect someone to clean this up for us.