Mueller's Job Too Important for Gig Status

A permanent special prosecutor, that's what the country needs. Enough of these temporary gigs for such an important service to the nation.

The position should be above that of a mere cabinet officer who can be replaced whenever the wind or the tide changes over and under the Potomac.

Permanent prosecutor should be the fourth equal, if maybe slightly superior, branch of government.

Like their fellow passers of the bar, the Supreme Court members, the special prosecutor’s term should be lifetime serving at the whim of themselves.

Notice would be served every time a new president assumes office that he or she is guilty until proved innocent.

The benign result? By the time the president leaves office, there would be no whiff of suspicion or we would know that the president was a perpetrator and needed to be impeached, convicted, and/or exiled to St. Helena.

This Office of the Permanent Special Prosecutor swings into action the moment the Electoral College count gets to where that puff of white smoke emerges from the White House chimney or the Capitol dome and we are certain we are about to have a new president and who it is.

Subpoenas would go out. Records of the new president’s business and personal dealings would be seized through armed raids if necessary, but secured for the lawyerly perusal of more than $15 per hour barristers taking patriotic leave from Ropes & Gray or Wachtell or Davis Polk or Scadden or Frankfurt Kurnit or Cellino & Barnes.

• Everything would be gone over:

• Frequent flyer miles

• Traffic tickets

• Hotel stays

• Blood tests

• Urine analysis

• Divorce settlements

• Separation agreements

• Passport analysis

• Restaurant bills

• SAT scores

• Report card reports

• Video footage of driving through bridge and tunnel tolls, parking garages

• Golf handicaps asserted and maintained memberships in fraternities or sororities

• Religious affiliations: Baptismal certificates or footage of Brises and readings at Bar or Bat Mitzvahs

• Deep background investigations of confirmation sponsors

• Tax returns for a lifetime

• Phone records

The Office of the Special Prosecutor would think of far more for sure than I who couldn’t even pass a notary test if slipped the answers.

Potential nominees?

I can think only of one, the perfect special prosecutor for this noble endeavor. Lawrence Tribe, passed over for the Supreme Court, but the co-author with Joshua Matz of a book just released and titled "To End a Presidency."

The perfect nominee. So perfect the job’s title should pay homage to that old and revered legal authority born and raised in Moscow, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

His title? Grand inquisitor. What else?

Tom Messner worked forever in advertising. In politics, he avoided the predictable negative bent and did positive ads for Reagan in ’84 and for Bush in ’88 along with Bush’s convention film. The agency he co-founded created NASDAQ’s first branding, Volvo’s comeback, and Fox News’s “We report. You Decide.” Then learning from the pols he partnered with (Roger Ailes in particular), they brought attack ads to such formerly benign areas such as telecom (MCI). At 73, he’s doing two things he never did before: Blogging here on wildly unconnected subjects coming on the heels of last year’s adventure: the writing of his first play, a musical “Dogs” destined now for either Broadway or The Pound. To read more of his reports — Click Here Now.