Loose Bannon

IN THE if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry department, comes now the one and (thankfully) only Steve Bannon, who we thought left the news columns months ago.

The latest from Mr. Bannon: He appeared in front of the House Intelligence Committee—under a subpoena the panel issued on the spot after he showed up— and answered questions. Sorta. Members asked him questions about the Trump administration’s transition into the White House and possible Russian meddling therein, but Mr. Bannon would only answer with a list of 25 prewritten questions that he brought with him. And every answer to all 25 questions was “no.”

The decidedly former adviser to the president supposedly claimed executive privilege that the president has never officially invoked. Huh? And can anybody invoke presidential executive privilege concerning the transition stage before a president takes the oath of office? Is there such thing as executive-elect privilege? According to the account in Arkansas’ Newspaper Friday: “Panel members [in the House] on both sides of the aisle also stressed that Bannon could not cite nonexistent privilege as an excuse to avoid their questions.”

As so many things do, this bad comedy sketch reminded us of something from an editorial writer of note written many years ago. We could almost reprint this on a daily basis, and just might:

“Here politics is purged of all menace, all sinister quality, all genuine significance, and stuffed with such gorgeous humors, such inordinate farce that one comes to the end of a campaign with one’s ribs loose, and ready for King Lear or a hanging, or a course of medical journals.”

—H.L. Mencken, “On Being an American.”