Jeff Sessions is not a bad guy.  It's just that he is not nor was he prepared to be an executive.  He stumbled out of the gate and did not have the balance to recover.

There are few people whose signature skills are as a legislator who are prepared to be an executive.  Jeff Sessions, a good and noble and accomplished person in his own right, is a tragic example.

Who can but honor his willingness to be a very early and very credible champion of the candidacy of President Donald D. Trump?  Who was not exceedingly pleased to see him forego his Senate seat and serve as the Attorney General of the United States?

Early on a Distinguished Eagle Scout, a student body president in college, a private attorney and a captain in the Army Reserve, a United States Attorney.

President Reagan nominated him to be a United States District Judge, a nomination that failed a Senate vote.  The lengthy and controversial machinations of the nomination are detailed in Wikipedia.  Piggy backing off of disparaging ad hominem by Senator Edward Kennedy, he became Attorney General of Alabama for two years.  A large part of this career was as U.S. Senator from 1997-2017.

All of which led to his becoming a supporter of Donald Trump, a staple at Trump campaign rallies, and being ultimately confirmed 52-47 as Attorney General of the United States in February of 2017.

He began his tenure at the Department of Justice supported by his president, President Trump, and the enthusiastic approbation of the whole of Trump's legion.  It envisioned a Department of Justice in the hands, finally, of a stallwart and skilled warrior willing and able to undo the corruption of the previous administration and its attorney general.

The President and Republican voters could not have been happier.

It lasted about twenty minutes.

Along came the wolf in the fable: the inexperience of a legislator in an executive position.  Attorney General Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and put the authority of it into the hands of an underling, Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Whether he did so mistakenly, or that he was unknowingly in over his head, or for whatever reason, it would be unfair to say that he did so out of lack of character, out  of conspiracy, or of malice.  But it would be fair to say that he struck a dagger into the heart of the President whom he had helped advance, and who had advanced him in turn; a wound that took months to take its toll on both of them.

Sessions shakes hands with his interim successor, Matthew Whitaker, leaving the Department of Justice yesterday

CNN screen grab via YouTube

The world is replete with men who have reached a position above their ken, and the world of America has its share, living and dead.

But in the case of Jeff Sessions the wolf visited a good man; a man of character and integrity; but a man nevertheless with a certain weakness.  He, and the country, will survive it.