Fate of Pompeo’s political future rests with Trump

You get the feeling that Secretary of State Michael Pompeo spends a lot of time practicing an exasperated sigh.

Pompeo technique boils down to this: Smile, don’t smirk. Stall. Deny. Switch topics. When asked, insist that you are not aiming for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. Pat Roberts’ retirement. That’s the seat — likely winnable for Pompeo — that if lost to Democrats could help flip control of the Senate.

So there was Pompeo, coyly downplaying his prospects as a candidate on a trip to Wichita. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell and other Republicans are pretty intrigued too.

They’re rightfully worried that another high-name-recognition GOPer in the race — the right-wing immigration-basher Kris Kobach — could win the primary and then lose in the general. That’s what happened in the Kansas governor’s race.

Breathe. Be grateful for the minutes on end in which the word “impeachment” doesn’t come up.

Because it is becoming apparent that Pompeo’s role is not that of innocent bystander. Indeed, Pompeo’s role in President Donald Trump’s Ukraine quid pro quo caper is likely to be fleshed out by the testimony of his own top diplomatic staff.

They’re appearing one by one before the House committees trying to sort out if Trump shook down Ukraine’s new leader, withholding $400 million in military aid until he could gain this strategic ally’s commitment to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s family and to advance a cockamamie conspiracy theory about the cybersecurity company Crowdstrike’s purported role in framing Russia as a hostile actor in the 2016 presidential election.

It would be a farce if the stakes weren’t so high. Trump appears to have illegally withheld congressionally appropriated funds — in what his acting chief of staff agreed was a quid pro quo — to extract foreign assistance in his presidential campaign — which help is itself illegal. Trump and others in the administration deny that was a quid pro quo.

Pompeo was listening in on that phone call.

Yet in his Wichita sitdown interview, Pompeo complained about the House inquiry into the affair. He didn’t pause to note that the Democrats are observing investigation protocols established in January 2015 by House Republicans, who then were in the majority and were conducting a dog and pony show called the Benghazi investigation.

A bit of Pompeo’s soul shrivels with each of these dodges and twists. Fellow evangelicals have questioned how he stood by and let the president pull troops from northern Syria, a move that was taken as an invitation by Turkey to begin attacking, leaving our Kurdish allies to fend for themselves.

Shortly after, Pompeo had the gall to give a speech in Nashville about the role of Christianity in his leadership, and the administration’s role in protecting religious minorities.

By the time he’d made it to Wichita, Pompeo’s lines included taking credit for how the administration helped broker a truce by the Turkish forces, which was essentially a face-saving charade for the White House.

People are starting to question how Pompeo — a top West Point graduate — could stray so far from the honor codes invested in him by that storied military institution. “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do.”