Duty, honor, country, subpoena

IN ALL THE noisy anticipation of the first Democratic candidates debate, it almost slipped off the radar, almost: On Tuesday, June 25, House Democrats announced that, after two years of working, silent as the Sphinx, toward completion of the ominously eponymous Mueller Report, the former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will finally come from behind the curtain and speak to the American people, in his own voice, on July 17th at 9 a.m. at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C.

The heretofore quietest man in Washington is breaking his two-year silence (minus 9-1/2 minutes) with what amounts to a Robert Mueller Residency: two appearances the same day, before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. It might be (as he’s already promised) the rhetorical equivalent of watching paint dry, but the country needs to hear it just the same.

The previous standout Marine officer has previously said he didn’t want to do it. In his short public statement in May, Mueller stepped outside his cone of silence and said any testimony before Congress “would not go beyond our report.”

“It contains our findings and analysis and the reasons for the decisions we made,” Mueller said. “We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”

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Nope. Not good enough, and it shouldn’t have been good enough. Mueller’s solemn attempt to immunize himself from direct testimony was rebuffed by Representatives Jerrold Nadler of New York and Adam B. Schiff of California, the chairmen of the committees.

They wrote Mueller a letter that was respectful but insistent. “The American public deserves to hear directly from you about your investigation and conclusions,” they wrote. “We will work with you to address legitimate concerns about preserving the integrity of your work, but we expect that you will appear before our committees as scheduled.”

Frankly, Mueller should’ve known: With as much attention paid and importance attached to the 448-page saga released to the world on April 18, there was no way for him to bow out quietly, settling into the emeritus identity of a hierophant ghost, someone glimpsed at far tables through windows of the best restaurants in Georgetown. The report is too important for that. Its conclusions, such as they are, require flesh and blood and voice to resonate the way Mueller hopefully intended.

To do that, in an image-drunk, post-postmodern society, it demands the visual, the compression, the drama of live testimony. Just as the quirks and complexities of Watergate needed the distillation of Sam Ervin’s gavel and John Dean’s cancer metaphor, this scandal, no less a big constitutional deal than Watergate was, needs airing where the American people live: on the air.

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IRONICALLY, the fact of Mueller’s testimony itself will be as compelling as the content of whatever he’ll say. The former special counsel could sit before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and read excerpts of “Green Eggs and Ham,” a la Ted Cruz on the Senate floor in 2013. It almost wouldn’t matter. The fact that he testifies at all — against his own personal preference — is what matters.

His planned appearance reinforces the necessary power of the institution of Congress and the tools, or the weapons if you like, at its disposal in the pursuit of what’s in the national interest. His preference not to testify is of no consequence, no more valid for him than it would have been for any of the 500 witnesses needed to complete the report.

It’s a low-down ironic shame that Mueller’s appearance before the House committees required a subpoena to make it happen. The man who spent two years communicating the idea — the principle — that no one is above the law — discovers that no one is above a subpoena. This is not a res ipsa loquitur moment.

Rep. Justin Amash, the lone congressional Republican backing impeachment, said it plain as day, cut to the nut of why it matters to him: "I want to hear him tell the story to the American people.”

So be it in 22 days. Sooner or later, every story demands to hear its author, out loud.

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Image credits: Mueller: Charles Dharapak/Associated Press.