Guest Blog. Ivan R. Dee on the Mueller Hearings.

Note from Doug Parker. The following guest blog was written by Ivan R. Dee, founder of the distinguished publishing house that bore his name.

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Almost sixty years ago, late in the 1960 presidential campaign, the Kennedy-Nixon debates became television’s first great political event.  Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy appeared together before the TV cameras four times—altogether four hours—over four weeks to answer questions put to them by a panel of four newsmen.  Eagerly anticipated, the debates were held in television studios in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and New York.  Somewhere between 85 and 120 million people witnessed at least one of the four telecasts.  Expectations were heavy.  The “winner” of these confrontations, many observers thought, would gain a commanding lead in the close contest for the White House.  And indeed, Kennedy was generally thought to be the victor, if due in part to Nixon’s sweaty appearance on the small screen.

Pundits labeled the impact of these televised debates enormous.  But two sociologists expert in politics and the media, Kurt Lang and Gladys Engel Lang, husband and wife, later analyzed the influence of the debates on the electorate and found that they had in fact changed few minds.  That is, Nixon supporters were confirmed in their choice while Kennedy supporters found even more to like in their candidate.

This nugget of a lesson from the past occurred to me while watching six hours of the Mueller hearings, billed as TV’s great political event of this year—so far.

On Wednesday morning, Robert Mueller spent three-plus hours before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by Jerry Nadler of New York.  After a break, he spent two-plus hours before the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by Adam Schiff of California.  Anticipation among the electorate as well as in Congress exceeded results: whatever the “revelations,” Democrats and anti-Trumpers found confirmation of their views; the MAGA crowd no doubt stands firm in support of their president.

Democrats and Republicans came to the event with different motives in mind. Fearing that the 448-page Mueller Report had failed to penetrate the body politic with its findings (according to a CNN poll, three-quarters of respondents had not read even a word of it), the Democrats hoped to use Mueller in the flesh to explain his major discoveries about the president and his cohorts.  (“If they won’t read the book, they’ll watch the movie.”)  Thus their committee members’ questioning of Mueller, which was well planned and rehearsed, centered on a recounting of his findings on the most salient issues: collusion with the Russians by the Trump campaign, and obstruction of justice and witness tampering by the president.  In their gentle prodding of Mueller, his report was quoted extensively, and he was sometimes asked to read passages from it himself—though he was happy to have them read by the questioners.  The Democrats’ goal was not so much to acquire ammunition for impeachment as to damage the president for the 2020 election.

Republican committee members, on the defensive, employed the typical Trump strategy when accused: attack.  Prosecutorial in tone, they concentrated on the methodology, process, and fairness behind the special counsel’s activities and findings.  This approach seemed to be less successful in appealing to voters, because while the Democrats emerged with judgments on “larger” questions, Republicans argued on minor and often technical points of procedure that probably remained obscure to uninformed Americans.  Thus, for example, Rep. Michael Turner of Ohio, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, spent his five minutes trying to show Mueller that “exonerate” was not a legitimate legal term, so it didn’t matter if Mueller advised that he had not exonerated Trump when it came to obstruction of justice.

Republicans also accused Mueller and his legal staff of political bias and of publishing damaging evidence about the president with no intent to indict him.  In effect, they argued, this left the president no official recourse to respond to the charges—he was guilty until proven innocent.  No one was above the law, declared Rep. John Ratcliffe of Texas, but this damn well amounted to placing the president below the law.

Mueller remained a reluctant witness throughout almost six hours of questioning.  He produced no fireworks, no powerful responses.  If the hearings produced any surprise at all, it was Mueller’s lack of mental acuity.  The former special prosecutor was not sharp; he had clearly aged and appeared frail.  His responses to prosecutorial-style questioning were often halting or confused, his voice occasionally tremulous.  In short, he was not his old self.  “He didn’t have the fight in him that he used to have,” said Glenn Kirschner, who worked with Mueller as a homicide prosecutor in the mid-1990s.

Nonetheless Mueller was able to provide a half-dozen mildly important takeaways:

(1) He did not exonerate Trump in his findings, contrary to what the president and his attorney general claim.

(2) On the basis of “substantial evidence,” Mueller believes that Trump could be indicted after he is out of office.

(3) He condemned Trump’s public support of Wikileaks.

(4) He did not subpoena the president because he expected that the White House would resist through the courts, unduly delaying the delivery of his report.

(5) He did not consider Trump’s written responses to his questions “credible.”

(6) He fears that candidates’ failure to report foreign intervention in U.S. elections will become the new normal in American politics.

Afterward Democrats mustered a brave front, claiming that Mueller had helped lay out a narrative of criminality that many Americans had been unaware of.  But most had to admit that his appearance was not the game changer they had hoped for.  (Preliminary Nielsen ratings show an average of just 13 million viewers across six major networks at any time during the Mueller hearings—a bust.)  Laurence Tribe, the Harvard law professor who has argued for impeachment, wrote on Twitter: “Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it.  The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.”

Republicans were gleeful.  President Trump called it a “devastating day” for the Democrats, declaring the hearings yet another victory for his presidency and adding that Mueller had done a “horrible job” as special prosecutor.  Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in the New York Times that Mueller’s appearance was the Democrats’ “last chance—but it was a Hail Mary that didn’t have a prayer.”  Instead the hearings had “made the case for closure.”

Vox, an internet news site, listed five losers in the wake of Mueller’s testimony: Robert Mueller, the House of Representatives, impeachment, President Trump, and the Mueller Report.  There were, Vox said, no winners.

Democrats must ask themselves, What now?  Barring some sort of explosive revelation that would galvanize voters, either through congressional investigation or his own ineptitude, it would seem that Agent Orange now has a clear path in his reelection campaign.  The Mueller hearings have destroyed any push toward impeachment.  Democrats must turn their attention to defeating Trump in the electoral college.  That concentration may be their greatest gift from this week’s proceedings.