Firing Sessions would create major whirlwind for administration

IT would be hard to find a member of President Trump’s Cabinet who has executed his administration’s policy more faithfully than Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Sessions embraced Trump’s campaign early, when most Republican officeholders and most conservatives ran screaming from it. He went through a scathing confirmation process. Since his swearing in, he has outspokenly voiced Trump’s policy concerns about everything from illegal immigration and urban violent crime to civil forfeiture and narcotics trafficking.

So, it is a strange twist indeed that Sessions should now have been singled out for bullying in Trump’s unending tweetstorm.

Sessions’ great error, as Trump sees it and spelled out in an interview in The New York Times, was his decision to recuse himself from the Justice Department’s investigation of a campaign in which he was personally involved. The decision seemed obvious at the time he made it. If Loretta Lynch compromised her integrity by meeting secretly with Bill Clinton while investigating his wife, which she certainly did, Sessions could hardly run an investigation of a campaign that would delve into his own activities.

Yet this act of simple common sense has brought Trump’s wrath down upon his most loyal lieutenant. In his confirmation hearings, Sessions made clear his role would be to enforce the law; he would not become an officer of the palace guard. Trump should therefore not be surprised at how Sessions has conducted himself.

Presidents are entitled to choose their Cabinet members, and Trump is entitled to fire Sessions if he chooses. But the president’s focus on this is inconsistent with his protestations that Russia is a red herring.

Polls show Trump’s popularity is down. But the country is nonetheless filled with voters who, while they may not be fans of Trump’s personality or style, nevertheless want to see him succeed. If the country had a stronger sense of common purpose than it currently does, most people should feel that way. But even now, with America horribly divided, there is a vast army of citizens in the conservative half of the ideological spectrum that wants to see courts filled with judges committed to the Constitution, wants the southern border made safe and indeed meaningful, and wants America made great again.

If Trump fails and, by his actions, conveys the idea that he and his party cannot govern, he will disappoint millions of people who, whatever their feelings about him personally, nevertheless wish him well in office. With the current drama over Sessions and, by extension, over the special counsel investigation of Russian election meddling, Trump seems set to disappoint.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Trump might take a lesson from the last few months. He surely recognizes that he did himself incalculable harm by firing FBI Director James Comey. In firing Comey, Trump resurrected a Russia probe that seemed to be going nowhere and dying quickly. He forced the Justice Department’s hand in hiring a special counsel.

At no time in the past six turbulent months has Trump’s presidency been in such great danger as it was during the week after Comey was unceremoniously ordered to clear out his desk. But if Trump follows up by firing Sessions as well, he should expect a much bigger whirlwind.