I must admit I don’t know a great deal about AG William Barr, but I’ve seen him on a couple of videos and been impressed simply by his manner. He gives the impression of methodical thought and intelligence.
However, former AG Holder analyzed a recent speech he gave and points out a number of intellectual misinterpretations which trouble Holder, and I find troubling as well. Here’s his analysis in WaPo:
Last month, at a Federalist Society event, the attorney general delivered an ode to essentially unbridled executive power, dismissing the authority of the legislative and judicial branches — and the checks and balances at the heart of America’s constitutional order. As others have pointed out, Barr’s argument rests on a flawed view of U.S. history. To me, his attempts to vilify the president’s critics sounded more like the tactics of an unscrupulous criminal defense lawyer than a U.S. attorney general.
When, in the same speech, Barr accused “the other side” of “the systematic shredding of norms and the undermining of the rule of law,” he exposed himself as a partisan actor, not an impartial law enforcement official. Even more troubling — and telling — was a later (and little-noticed) section of his remarks, in which Barr made the outlandish suggestion that Congress cannot entrust anyone but the president himself to execute the law.
Which may sound initially plausible, but such a viewpoint collapses once the implicit, but ridiculous, assumption that the President is incorruptible is identified and removed. It then becomes inevitable that law enforcement cannot be vested in a single person, because a corrupt person will not investigate – and impeach – themselves. Not only does it make the concept ludicrous, it also brings into sharp focus the term limit, enforced by law, on the Director of the FBI, after the salutary tenure of the initial FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, and his dubious practices. While the term limit on Presidents was not created for the same reason, it incidentally serves the same purpose.
In Barr’s view, sharing executive power with anyone “beyond the control of the president” (emphasis mine), presumably including a semi-independent Cabinet member, “contravenes the Framers’ clear intent to vest that power in a single person.” This is a stunning declaration not merely of ideology but of loyalty: to the president and his interests. It is also revealing of Barr’s own intent: to serve not at a careful remove from politics, as his office demands, but as an instrument of politics — under the direct “control” of President Trump.
And may betray a person who looks to others for direction, a person of the hierarchy, as it were. That is not an appropriate personality for the head of the Department of Justice.
Not long after Barr made that speech, he issued what seemed to be a bizarre threat to anyone who expresses insufficient respect for law enforcement, suggesting that “if communities don’t give that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need.” No one who understands — let alone truly respects — the impartial administration of justice or the role of law enforcement could ever say such a thing. It is antithetical to the most basic tenets of equality and justice, and it undermines the need for understanding between law enforcement and certain communities and flies in the face of everything the Justice Department stands for.
Naturally, this is an utterly repugnant utterance by AG Barr. The explicit threat that everyone who doesn’t dance to his tune should expect to lose their police protection is the message of a bully who needs to know that everyone knows their place in society, and is nestled obediently in it[1]. This hierarchical command fits in perfectly with the demands of the man he seems to consider his boss, President Trump.
And it’s worth noting that placing the blame for societal ills on the convenient goats who aren’t doing his dance is a standard hierarchy-oriented person’s response. The hierarchy represents stability and all that’s good, in their mind; it’s the reason many religious organizations are hierarchical. But when the hierarchy itself is poison, well, what’s to repair it? It’s difficult to even overcome the mindset, and thus the recent agonizing travails of the Catholic Church, in particular the Irish Catholic Church. Members of hierarchical organizations with a tradition of obedience and a claim of eternal goodness are particularly vulnerable to reaching fallacious conclusions such as this.
Holder suggests that Barr is, or perhaps was, a highly respected lawyer. How this all plays out in the years ahead should be an interesting study in pathological behaviors.
1 Which reminds me of an article I read in Whole Earth Review – or possible REASON Magazine – some thirty odd years ago, which I’ll paraphrase:
The strength of Japanese society is that everyone knows their role in it; the strength of American society is that no one knows their role in it.
