Comey's Calculations Favored the GOP

Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey told a Senate hearing today that he faced an ugly choice during the final days of the 2016 election. He could choose either "speak" or "conceal." He could reveal that the previously concluded investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails had been reopened. Or he could conceal it (while knowing that one of his own agents might leak the news).

Comey's options were not equally bad, in his view. They were asymmetric. That's a useful concept in this era of asymmetric threats and asymmetric polarization and the asymmetry of the public utterances and actions of Comey himself during the presidential campaign. Conducting simultaneous investigations of rival presidential candidates, Comey broke department protocol to blab about the Democrat, while keeping mum about the Republican.