The long-anticipated Congressional hearings featuring Robert
Mueller will not convince more Americans that Democrats should move forward on
impeachment. Democrats missed their last
opportunity to move public opinion.
During the Judiciary Committee hearing, the Democrats’ first
problem was that Mueller turned out not to be a very good witness. Repeatedly asking members to repeat their
questions, he seemed old and unfamiliar with his own report. Even when they tried to defend his integrity
by pointing out a Republican president originally named him as a U.S. Attorney,
he got the president who appointed him wrong (he said it was President George
H.W. Bush; it was Reagan).
As he said he would, he stuck to his report, did not discuss
the underlying evidence, and did not discuss anything outside of the four
corners of his report. As a result, he
neither defended himself against accusations of bias from Republicans nor
supported the conclusions of the Democrats.
The second thing they did wrong was read his own report back
to him instead of asking him to read sections of the report himself. They asked him to a number of times, but he
demurred.
Yet he was the witness; if they wanted him to read his
report, they could have insisted he do so.
The American public needed to hear his words in his voice, looking into
the camera, reading slowly and clearly the instances of obstruction he laid out
in his report.
The Democrats did well emphasizing and elaborating on the
episodes of alleged obstruction outlined in the report. That is the basis for impeachment Mueller’s
report left open for Democrats. They
also wisely took advantage of having more Members on the Committee than the
Republicans, effectively using the time of their last three Members as a
closing argument of sorts.
Yet they made no effort to rebut what they surely should
have known were going to be attempts by Republicans to discredit Mueller and
his report until the last 10 minutes of the hearing. Even then, they left that job to a single
Democratic Member of the Committee after hours of hammering by
Republicans.
They had a script based on what they wanted to get out of
the hearing regardless of what Republicans said, and they stuck to it. That gave them no chance to be nimble and
react to Republican questions they should have anticipated.
Republicans’ questions were easy to see coming because they
were the same as the talking points they have been using since the report came
out. Yet because Democrats’ agenda was
so rigid, scripted and focused exclusively on pressing the issue of obstruction,
they did not give Mueller a chance to publicly and forcefully push back on inaccurate
assertions of bias or the legitimacy of the investigation itself.
Instead, Democrats and Mueller mostly let those assertions
stand. There are twenty-four Democrats
on the Judiciary Committee, and not one of them asked, simply, “Director
Mueller, would you describe your team as a bunch of angry Democrats, as the
President has?”
They did not emphasize Mueller’s relieving Peter Strzok of his duties when evidence of bias arose. They did not make clear that the evidence of the Trump campaign’s interactions with Russia demanded the Special Counsel’s appointment; that even if there was no fire, there was definitely a lot of smoke.
Only at the end of the Judiciary Committee hearing, did
Mueller finally defend the integrity of his staff. Yet even that defense landed flat because
Republicans continued to press the case of bias and Democrats ignored the
attack – they let those accusations hang in the air as an unpopped bubble.
Make no mistake, it was not, and has not been, a good look
for the Republicans to attack the credibility of a highly decorated and
respected attorney, veteran, and former FBI Director. They have decided that it is their job to
defend indefensible actions by tarnishing the reputations of Mueller and a
group of attorneys that have spent their careers putting their personal
political beliefs aside in pursuit of justice.
As a matter of morality, this may be unseemly. As a matter of politics, combined with
Democrats ignoring these attacks, it was extremely successful.
Republicans effectively used the back-and-forth format of
Congressional hearings and Mueller’s reticence to respond to questions with
anything beyond what was in the report to muddy the waters. Fox News will replay Republicans’ lines of
questioning and continue to discredit Mueller and his team. MSNBC will play Democrats’ hammering on the
President’s attempts to obstruct the investigation on a never-ending loop. In other words, the needle will not have
moved as a result of today’s hearing.
