Michael Barone is one of the sharpest and best-informed observers of American politics. So when he offers a judgment, I take a good look at it. At Townhall, he posits that James Comey is yet another “victim” of the Clintons, set up by Loretta Lynch:

 One can understand why Comey could have felt miffed when Lynch left him publicly exposed as the one who would decide whether the putative Democratic presidential nominee would be criminally prosecuted. If an FBI director shouldn't decide who gets prosecuted, as Rosenstein correctly argued, he certainly shouldn't have to make that call when the decision could determine who will be elected president of the United States.

Comey's July 5 statement made clear that Hillary Clinton had violated Title 18, Section 793(f) of U.S. Code, put in place by the Espionage Act. But he added to the words of the statute an intent requirement and so recommended that she not be prosecuted. It's not hard to imagine that he felt entitled to inflict political damage on someone for whom the Obama Justice Department had put in the fix.

That makes Comey only the latest victim of the Clintons, who, like F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tom and Daisy Buchanan, smash up "things and creatures" and then retreat "back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it (is) that (keeps) them together, and let other people clean up the mess they (have) made."

The mess continues, as Democrats howl against the removal of an official whose removal they demanded up through lunchtime Tuesday and continue to search, Ahab-like, for evidence that Russia somehow stole the election.

But for the spotlight on him thanks to Hillary’s email server and the way the hot potato was tossed to him, Comey probably would have continued in his J. Edgar Comey persona and remained the widely feared head of the national police.

Even more relevant than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fiction are the words of former Clinton associate James McDougall:

"I think the Clintons are really sort of like tornadoes moving through people's lives," he once said. "I'm just one of the people left in the wake of their passing by."