Review: A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership by James Comey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not a whole lot of new stuff if you've already been following Comey's story in the news for a while or even his interviews with the media more recently. The main takeaways here are his thoughts on the qualities of good leadership, and how Trump basically fails to exemplify any of them.

Emphasis on Trump, because even though the book doesn't really address Trump's presidency at all until the last couple of chapters or so, everything up until that point is pretty much building up to Trump in some way, almost as if Comey's entire life story was fated to lead up to their confrontation. I imagine most memoirs (or rather, most people's lives) aren't designed or written in such a single-minded way, which puts this one in a bit of an awkward position. But as Comey himself has mentioned in interviews, there were plenty of other significant parts of his life that he didn't include in the book, presumably in order to focus the message better.

Personally, I'm inclined to agree with the general substance of his message, even though I find its execution to be a little forced, and it doesn't help that his actions naturally invite critics to make big fusses about an apparent overinflated sense of ego, in which he sees himself above the law and its institutions when things don't go his way. I'll admit, his actions in the past couple of years do seem puzzling and difficult to reconcile with his self-professed respect for institutional procedures and norms when it comes to the FBI/Justice Dept and their place within American government. And I think it takes a certain amount of "ego" to be willing to write and then publish and then promote a book like this that goes so far to defend one's actions in the first place. But I get the sentiment behind it.

That said, I think it's important to note something that I think only comes up briefly towards the end, and feel should be emphasized a bit more: no true "norms" exist for the kinds of situations that Comey has had to face in the past two years. This is something that became more clear to me after getting to the part where he indirectly "leaks" his memos to the press: because, as he puts it, he didn't feel that he could trust the leadership of the Justice department in the current administration-- especially after being unable to make sense of any of reasons given for his firing, even including Trump's comment about relieving the pressure off of the Russia investigation. That doesn't necessarily excuse what he did, but it does at least explain (in a way that makes sense to me) why someone as apparently principled as Comey would go so far as to do something so seemingly the complete opposite of those principles. I mean, knowing his strong will and stubbornness, where else would you expect him to go?

Comey's story strikes me as an interesting example of what happens when you take a highly idealistic leader and force him into an untenable situation where his ideals come into conflict with the demands placed upon him. Typically in our... I guess post-post-modern world today, such a person either adapts to the situation, losing a part of his integrity in the process, or he doesn't survive past that point (incidentally, most fiction I've read that conveys the latter scenario ends in that character's death). In any other presidency or political environment, Comey likely would've ended his career with distinguished honors and been well regarded for his public service. But after being forced to confront the impossible task of somehow representing a non-partisan organization in an otherwise increasingly partisan world, and then forced to legally serve under a man whose value system was almost completely antithetical to his, Comey is now regarded as a flawed, troubling or even infuriating individual by people on both sides of the political spectrum. But exaggerated criticisms aside (I find it hard to agree with Chris Wallace calling this book 'bitchy'; it's nowhere near that level), some reader complaints do merit attention here.

To be fair, Comey doesn't fully exonerate himself in the telling of his own story, and I mean that moreso than I think he himself is willing to admit. There are parts that the more critical-minded among us will still continue to find baffling, like the nature of his communication with Loretta Lynch, given the revelation that Comey didn't confront Lynch at all about his misgivings with her behavior during the Clinton investigation. And some of what would be the strength or force of his narrative is undermined by the problematic notion that for all his concern about defending the integrity and image of the FBI, the unilateral nature of his actions and subsequent need to have to repeatedly explain them have actually in some sense weakened those things in the public's eye during the past two years. What does it say about our government institutions that it takes a former FBI chief acting completely outside normal protocol to force them to actually do their job?

A part of me wonders if the situation we're in now, with the special counsel's investigation now running at full speed with no end yet in sight (yet), was worth everything that's happened to get to this point. The idealist in me still doesn't entirely know. But the pragmatist in me leans towards yes. And I feel like the former is slowly dying with each day. And I'm not sure how I feel about that.

tl;dr: I like this book but I have mixed feelings because reality is complicated.