Friday 12 May 2017

A little bit of advice goes a long way

The important thing about making decisions if you are president of the USA, or president of most nations - there are obvious exceptions, Russia, North Korea, Iran, possibly China - is that you have to think of the likely political consequences. So, you sack the FBI director, but before you do, you sit down with all your closest mates for a brainstorm. "So, guys and girls, what are the 100 questions that will be asked once I have announced that James Comey has been terminated?" I can think of 100 questions without any trouble at all. The first one would have been: why terminated and not sacked?! Advisers with proper political brains would have warned Trump right away, if you do this Mr President, you will be accused of trying to interfere with the FBI investigation into the Russia collusion affair. Er, Mr President, no one, I mean no one is going to believe the Hillary Clinton email line. Mr President, I think you should wait a bit. Haven't we got Sergei Lavrov turning up in a few hours? Mr President, better the devil you know than the devil you don't know. If, as we all know, there is nothing behind the "collusion" allegation, then let Comey stay on in the job and he will confirm this in due course. Sorry, Mr President, you say he refused to be loyal to you. Well, I'm sorry, he's the director of the FBI, not your personal security guard. He's supposed to do his job according to the criteria laid down when the FBI was founded and it doesn't state anywhere that the director is supposed to do what he is told by the encumbent president. Comey promised to be honest. Well I should hope so. But loyalty is not part of the deal. Whatever you do, Mr President, come out with an explanation and then stick with it. The worst thing to do is to change the explanation every two minutes because that will make you look like a total idiot. No disrespect, Mr President. So, to sum up, don't do it, don't even think of doing, or if you're determined to do it, don't do it now.

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