James Comey was at the center of many of the key events that lead to this, The Darkest Timeline. As director of the the FBI, he announced literal October Surprise that there were more Clinton emails, and that he was reopening the investigation. This may have very well flipped the election. When he was fired on May 9, 2017 he released memos of his conversations with President Trump to the press, prompting the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the ongoing saga of Stupid Watergate. His memoir is selling like hotcakes. Does it offer any special insight into the man and his place in history? I borrowed this book, but should you personally support the Jim Comey book tour?

Well, sort of. Comey starts with his childhood, and his lifelong dislike of bullies. A terrifying home invasion when he was 16 by the Ramsay Rapist, lead to an interest in justice, and in college he switched from pre-med to pre-law. Comey wanders through the early bosses who taught him the basics of leadership with integrity; a devotion to higher principles and a generosity of spirit to those around him. Comey talks about the exact opposite, a style of leadership he learned from the mobsters he prosecuted in his early career, leadership built on lies, an us-versus-them attitude, and loyalty to individuals.

Comey moves through his thinking as Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush (Deputy AG is a shockingly powerful position, by the way). In this role, Comey opposed wiretapping and torture policies formulated in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 that he believed lacked legal foundation, despite staunch resistance from the office of Vice President Cheney. The high-point is the dramatic "bedside visit", where Comey and Alberto Gonzales confronted each other by the hospital bed of Attorney General Ashcroft, over the re-authorization of a mass surveillance program. Comey won this bureaucratic skirmishes, though one gets the sense of his perspective and its limits. It's not so much that Comey finds torture and mass surveillance morally opprobrious (though he does), it's that the Vice President's position exceeded the limits authorized by Congress.

Comey is at heart an institutionalist. Public trust is a reservoir built up slowly over decades, and which can leak in a single instance of bad judgment. He talks about some public relations missteps as FBI director under President Obama; a tone-deaf concern over rising violent crime and anti-police attitudes, and an inability to merge the interests of law enforcement with strong encryption. His personal admiration for Obama as a leader shines through. Obama listens thoughtfully, treats people humanely, and exudes an aura of confidence; if anything is wrong with him, he's too sure of his own abilities. Comey has pleasant things to say about George W. Bush and many Bush appointees, aside from Cheney and Cheney's torture lawyers.

Roughly about 2/3rds of the way through the book, we get to the meat of the matter, the Clinton email investigation, and Comey and Trump. Comey reiterates again and again that public faith in the FBI required that he continue an investigation of Clinton's email server, that he announce the Weiner laptop emails days before the election, and that he make extended commentaries on the matter, rather than a terse "an investigation is under way." Comey erases his own power, his own judgment of the realities of the situation, in favor of the stance the FBI must stand beyond politics.

And then there's Trump. Comey has nothing good to say about the man. Self-absorbed, continually talking a stream of nonsense, surrounded by lackeys and lickspittles and broken men. The multiple private meetings, where Trump pressured Comey to leave Michael Flynn alone, were extremely alarming and Comey began documenting those meeting in private memos. When he was fired, now private citizen Comey released the memos, and here we are.

Given the insane and accelerated timescale of the Trump administration (as of this week, new lawyer Rudy Giuliani went on Hannity and admitted that Trump paid Cohen to pay off Stormy Daniels, which directly contradict what Trump said a week ago and is so insane that days later no one is sure of the legal implications), it's good to have an a reminder of where we were a year ago. On the other hand, you can just go back and read the WaPo headlines, and the book on Trump and collusion is far from closed. As a guide to Comey's thinking, it lacks real candor or an honest appraisal. Private citizen Comey is free to speak to the press in ways that FBI director Comey is not, but by withholding the memos until after he had fired, Comey reveals a side that he doesn't talk about much, a belief that he could have private integrity in Trumpland. What if Trump had not fired Comey? Where would we be now?

Comey, in his own image, is a good boss and a decent man. But he failed the most crucial test of leadership, deciding wisely in an environment of confusion, uncertainty, and chaos. No amount of sympathetic "there was nothing else that you could have done" from Congressional democrats can erase Comey's complicity in and responsibility for the present state of affairs. The FBI and the Justice Department should strive to be non-partisan, but as Terry Pratchett so astutely noticed, politics and policeman have the same root of polis, and a senior officer of the law cannot be ignore the political dimensions of their work. When the Republican party has so gratuitously abandoned a concern for objective reality, for the Constitution and democratic norms, and for the notion that the will of the people speaks louder than major donors, non-partisanship is not neutrality, it is aiding and abetting.

History will remember Jim Comey. Like it remembers Pontius Pilate.