Gonna wax serious for a second. Will probably regret it. But: there's a lot of talk about institutions lately, their resilience and lack thereof. True enough! But to paraphrase Mitt Romney, institutions are people, my friends.
The developments of the last few days happened due to (mostly) healthy institutions: the press and the Justice Department. But as we've seen, for good and bad, institutional actions are dependent on the people who populate them.
We know about Trump's payoff to Stormy Daniels because of two reporters at the @WSJ, and their editors, who pursued the story despite what the paper's owner might think or want.
That story and the Manafort saga was pursued by reporters there, at the @NYTimes, @washingtonpost, @NPR and others, despite serious threats and warnings from very powerful people. They didn't have to. They chose to.
And the case against Cohen was pursued by individuals in a US Attorney's office, under the control of a Trump appointee, despite the wishes of their ultimate political leadership. They could have chosen otherwise.
Robert Mueller has been justly praised for pursuing his mission despite extraordinary political/media attacks. But Asst AG Rod Rosenstein has protected Mueller (however imperfectly). He didn't have to. He chose and chooses to.
Hell, Attorney General Sessions -- whatever you think of his policies -- chose to recuse himself from the Russia investigation because it was the right thing to do, and so far, despite astonishing attacks and humiliations, refuses to step aside so the investigation can be ended.
Our society -- our country -- can survive even if everybody doesn't make the right and responsible choices. But it won't if not enough of them do. There is a tipping point we haven't reached yet. Today I think we can say it's further away than we feared.
[FART NOISE]
