Christopher Wray Signifies America's Thirst for Normalcy

At one point, Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Christopher Wray, "pal," as in, "You're gonna be director of the FBI, pal." This is about as tough as things got during Wray's confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. This is also about as memorable as that hearing got as well. This was a bipartisan exercise in rebuilding "confidence in our institutions" and in trying to make sure that the FBI can be pried free of the influence of the plague ship currently d/b/a the executive branch.

Everybody got what they wanted. The Republicans got a nominee who likely will be confirmed, perhaps even overwhelmingly. The Democrats got Wray on the record as supporting Robert Mueller's investigation, as promising to be loyal to the Constitution and to the rule of law to the point of resigning if asked to do something untoward by the president*, and as not being a guy who drinks vodka with a guy named Boris, to borrow a phrase from Congressman Trey Gowdy, the lopheaded Javert of Benghazi. Even Gowdy is completely fed up with the kazatsky around the truth that the denizens of Camp Runamuck have been doing. After the hearing, chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa said he wanted Paul Manafort under oath before the committee in one quick hurry.

That was the acknowledged bipartisan subtext behind Wray's hearing. Please be honest. Please give us something to believe in. Please don't be a tool of the band of thieves and boobs that the country installed in the White House. There was something child-like and adorable about the whole business, and I will grant you that Not Being Corrupt is setting the bar for an FBI director somewhere deep in the planet's mantle, but these folks will take anything they can get. Only someone who's been asleep since 1933 would take seriously the notion of the FBI as the bulwark guardian of constitutional government. Politicization of the FBI has been a bipartisan project for decades. But, again, these are not normal times. The president* who is the subject of an FBI investigation is getting to appoint the guy to replace the FBI director he fired because the previous director was getting too close on "the Russia thing." You take what you can get and you hope for the best.

Nobody was more plaintive than Young Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. He's already on the record a number of times as being Very Troubled by the shenanigans of the family Trump. On Wednesday, he was Very Concerned about how the country has lost faith in its institutions.

"There's a crisis in public trust in this country, obviously. This institution has about a 12 percent approval rating. Over the last four decades, we've gone from a net average of 50 percent public support from most of our institutions to about 30. If you're confirmed, you'll have an important responsibility to help rebuild public trust in the Bureau."

Four decades of deteriorating public trust in our government institutions, you say? That brings us back to, say, 1980, when a president in his first inaugural address told the nation that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem, and everybody cheered. Ever since, one of our two major political parties has made dinner out of that notion—that government is an alien entity, that government is a repository of everything that's corrupt and incompetent about the country, and that government is Them and not Us. Of course, last November, that view of the country came to its final apotheosis when the voters installed the president* whose antics have so Seriously Troubled the young senator from Nebraska that he practically was begging Christopher Wray to bail out his fragile faith in our public institution.

(On Tuesday, Joe Scarborough made a big noise about leaving the Republican Party which, he said, was no longer the Party Of Reagan. Come on, Joe. Covert meetings with the country's adversaries? Straight Reagan. At least Junior didn't sell Russia any missiles.)

I don't have a particular problem with Wray, except that he's been out of law-enforcement for quite a while and I wonder if he truly understands the buzzsaw into which he's about to walk. I was more taken by the senators, especially the Republicans, and their naked desire to find some kind of a redeemer somewhere, and who are offering up a little prayer that they'll never have to realize that the same country that elected them elected Donald Trump.

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Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.