The President’s man, service notwithstanding, faces
punishment to serve the people’s, if not his own, tastes. His power demanded leniency. Despite protests, he seeks to shrink the
price of his ally’s crime. Stone’s offense against some vulgar sense of propriety
or simple taste matters not to a President who knows well on which side his
bead was buttered: he could be loyal, especially to spite his enemies.
Now the Attorney General intervenes, claiming that the
President’s taste plays no part. The press complains; ordinary people fail to
notice or care. The President’s will is a fait accompli. He had he found in William Barr a man
uniquely suited, if not by nature, at least by ambition, to fulfill his wishes.
Barr, whose motives were hidden from none but himself, sought
nothing if not to increase the President’s powers, no matter the President. For
him, office mattered, not the man. But,
however inscrutable because unpredictable, the President in that moment, at
least, had the better of him: Barr might try to please his master, but the
President could always pardon Stone. Therefore, President kept Barr’s impotent
subordination, while holding in reserve an ultimate capacity to decide. Nor was
the Republican majority of the Senate willing to do more than preserve office
at the price of subordination. If anything were certain, it was the threat of
retaliation, while loyalty increased the opportunity for obscurity. Ultimately,
senators preferred the President’s patronage to mere votes.
Media asked Barr to call for the President's restraint. The latter’s reserve matched Barr’s foresight. If the President refrained from compliance,
at least, one could see the trajectory. Barr, however, seemed ignorant of the
foundation he set for the future: while he imagined security might come, he
never considered the cost. Thus did a President, obscure for all the clarity of
his signs, coopt an officer devoted to an arguably higher cause and lay the
base of his family’s ultimate and foreseeable demise.
