Why James Comey should resign

It won't fix everything, but it will demonstrate that what the FBI director did was completely beyond the pale

It's over for James Comey.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst)

It is now clear that FBI Director James Comey's last-minute intervention in the presidential election has given Donald Trump a boost of several points in the polls. Comey's short announcement to Republican congressional committee heads that he was investigating new emails related to the Hillary Clinton email server investigation hit that TV news sweet spot of vague but ominous-sounding, and centrist journalists were on it like a pack of dogs on a three-legged cat.

The fact that there was no concrete anything in the announcement (for all we know, the emails might not have anything to do with Hillary Clinton at all), did not even slightly hinder several consecutive days of the most crack-brained people in journalism speculating wildly about the disastrous effects it was sure to have on Clinton's campaign. That prophecy became self-fulfilling. Poll averages show Trump gaining at least a couple points, and a recent poll now shows Trump beating Clinton by 8 points on honesty.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.