Opinion | Mueller Agonistes – The New York Times

Michael Tomasky has an excellent Op-Ed in The Times that lays out the problem with Mueller’s approach. “Robert Mueller,” Tomasky writes, “did not want to be seen as being part of anything too ‘political.’ As a creature of his generation, his class, the Marines and the Justice Department, being political surely goes against every instinct he has.”

Tomasky continues: “But there is another ideal that men like Mr. Mueller … were raised to uphold: the willingness to stand up to the dark impulses of the moment.”

Leadership often requires making difficult calls and accepting the consequences. In this case, Mueller would have been viciously criticized if he had a made a clear decision — and concluded either that Trump’s behavior didn’t seem to rise to the level of a crime or that it did. But making that call would have been the right thing to do.

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“Mueller is, in his own Mueller-like way, screaming for presidential impeachment proceedings. But he’s too respectful to say it as directly as America (and Congress) evidently needs him to say it,” tweeted Wired’s Garrett Graff, who wrote a book about Mueller.

Mueller’s mere recital of his findings suggests that “congressional Democrats waiting for a clear sign on what to do from their constituents will probably be waiting for a while,” Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick writes. “For anyone who’s been hoping that Mueller is going to lead us out of this morass, well, no, he’s not.”