James Fallows. The Atlantic, online edition, Oct. 30, 2016. "Trump Time Capsule #150: James Comey and the Destruction of Norms." https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/10/trump-time-capsule-james-comey/505904/.
Comes now James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic who has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He once served as a speechwriter for President Carter, and he has written frequently -- and eloquently -- over the years of the erosion of standards in American political life by celebrity culture and the demands of a celebrity-obsessed 27/ news cycle, among other topics ranging from small-engine aircraft (he's a licensed pilot) to industrialization in China. His book Breaking The News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (1997) especially shaped my thinking.
This year Fallows has been writing a series of time capsules on the following premise: "People will look back on this era in our history to see what was known about Donald Trump while Americans were deciding whether to choose him as president. Here’s a running chronicle from James Fallows on the evidence available to voters as they make their choice, and of how Trump has broken the norms that applied to previous major-party candidates." Today's is about FBI Director James Comey's "October surprise":
The rules in politics haven’t changed that much in recent years. What has changed is adherence to norms, in an increasingly destructive way.I made that case, using examples different from the ones I’m about to present here, nearly two years ago. The shift in norms is also a central part of Thomas Mann’s and Norman Ornstein’s prescient It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, and Mike Lofgren’s The Party Is Over, plus of course Jonathan Rauch’s “How America Went Insane,” our very widely read cover story (subscribe!) this summer. [Links, including to a subscription page, in the original.]
[Examples, mostly concerned with the U.S. Senate's refusal to schedule hearings on President Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee but also including Justice Ginsberg's offhand remark on Donald Trump, omitted.
* * * The official rules didn’t change in these circumstances. The norms—that is, the expectation of what you “should” do, what you “really have to do,” what is the “right thing” to do, even if the letter of the law doesn’t spell it out—have changed. For its survival, a democracy depends on norms. That’s why the shift matters.
And that is the context in which I think about James Comey’s plunge into electoral politics, with his announcement about whatever “new” Clinton-related email information the FBI may or may not have found.
No one knows what this will mean for the election. Millions of people have already voted; in the nine days until official election day there’s not enough time to fully vet and consider what Comey may have found. Will the announcement re-energize Hillary Clinton’s supporters, making them worry that the race may be tightening again? Depress them? Motivate team Trump? Bolster the “they’re all terrible” case for third-party candidates?
We don’t know. But anyone experienced in politics, as Comey obviously is, would have known for dead certain that his intrusion would change the process in a way that cannot be undone. This is apparently what other officials in the FBI and Justice Department were telling Comey before he took this step. Two former deputy attorney generals—Jamie Gorelick, who served under Bill Clinton, and Larry Thompson, who served under George W. Bush—made that point in a new Washington Post essay that lambastes Comey for his self-indulgent decision (emphasis added) ...
[Extended quotation omitted]
* * * Last week I mentioned the ongoing cultural/“norms-enforcing” challenges that had plagued the Philippines, which I’d written about back at the end of the Marcos era in a piece called “A Damaged Culture.” The rules by which the Philippine Republic is governed are fine. A big problem involved norms—the things that powerful people did, just because they could get away with it.
The rules of American governance are still more or less OK, despite the increasing mismatch between the 18th-century structural decisions built into the Constitution and the realities of 21st-century life. It’s time to worry about the norms.
