Sessions on the spot

Election victories have a remarkable way of ratcheting back the rhetoric. So it has been with President-elect Donald Trump (on select subjects, anyway) and so it is with his nominee for attorney general, U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who sat for his grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

During the campaign Sessions, a former federal prosecutor and prominent Trump supporter, insisted the Clinton Foundation should be “fully investigated” for accepting generous donations from foreign leaders seeking access to Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state. He also proclaimed the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server inadequate.

Of course that was in the context of a campaign, one many assumed Clinton would win. But as he prepares to join the Trump administration Sessions is now recusing himself — rightly — from any possible Justice Department investigations into Clinton, noting that his impartiality would be called into question.

“We can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute,” he said, affirming with that statement one of this nation’s bedrock democratic values.

After weeks of being caricatured Sessions surely surprised some Democrats and media critics simply by showing up at his hearing without devil horns. He would not support a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States, he said. He said current law “absolutely” prevents waterboarding (which Trump has vowed to reinstate). He offered a vigorous defense of his record on race matters.

Sessions is an unabashed conservative, to be sure. But the quest to paint him as the second coming of Attila may just collapse under the weight of the facts.