Politics, Lies, and 93 v. 8 - Swampland - TIME Brooks’s distinction is between two different conceptions of the word “political.â€? Or rather, like most nice clear distinctions, there actually is a spectrum of meaning. US Attorneys are supposed to be political in the sense that in performing their duties they reflect the policies of the president who appointed them. If the president believes strongly in prosecuting pornographers, he is not just within his rights but within his duties to fire a prosecutor who ignores those cases. If, at the other extreme, he wants a prosecutor to drop a case against a large contributor, that is political in the bad sense. And as Brooks says, the eight US Attorneys in the present controversy seem to offer a mixed bag. Yes, of course, even one overt attempt to suppress a legitimate prosecution for corruption is one too many—it doesn’t have to be a majority of the eight to be an outrage. And I remain astounded that people find the Clinton analogy not merely wrong but preposterous. There are plenty of differences, but it’s important to try the shoe on the other foot. Sure, I see the argument that a clean sweep is less suspicious than selective defenestration.

This is an example of how meanings of words and logical causalities are not straightforward implicit consequences of language. Rather, they are negotiated (sometimes in minute detail) both in public and private discourse.