Overpraise is Always a Tell

the eternal cycle

Wendy Davis was one of the most brilliant politicians in the country, a rising star who exploded out of her pro-abortion Texas filibuster in bold pink sneakers to vault to the very heights of national prominence. There were magazine covers, and a gushing Vogue profile. She was undoubtedly examining the floor plan of the governor’s mansion to figure out where to put her stuff, but only as a stop along the way to Washington, D.C.

The Times really tried to keep Davis afloat for a while, but that middle headline starts to give some hints where it was all headed.

So anyway. To answer the question from the magazine cover, no. She ran for governor and really lost. She ran for Congress and lost. Don’t know what she’s doing now.

But then came Beto O’Rourke!

But then it was MUELLER TIME, BABY, and the brilliant Robert Mueller was about to take out Trump with his icy genius, because he was the most brilliant inside operator in D.C., and everyone feared him, and he was gathering the most brilliant team of investigators on the planet. Below, actual footage from Robert Mueller’s arrival at the Capitol to give congressional testimony on his report:

At least a dozen other examples available upon request.

The latest tough, methodical genius to rise against Evil Drumpf was the brilliant Fulton County DA, Fani Willis, one of the only prosecutors in the country who had the sophisticated legal mind to handle a complex RICO case against a former President of the United States. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used all of the expected cut-and-paste language in their big profile of the new rising star:

“Her skills as a prosecutor are the stuff of legend in the DA’s office.”

“Her trademark tenacity dates back to her college days.”

And so on.

She was also fiercely driven, thinking only of justice: “Willis remains tethered to the office, sleeping only a few hours a night. She’s known to email her staff — close to 200 attorneys, investigators, legal assistants and administrative aides — at 2 a.m.”

Yes, she certainly does work very closely with her staff at 2 a.m.

The New York Times outdid the local newspaper, though, and gave Fani Willis the Full Wendy Davis™.

This Fani Willis, she’s a seasoned prosecutor. She’s gone toe-to-toe with murderers in the courtroom, for years, and she’s too hard to break. She’s sharp, educated, grounded, relentless, shrewd. She is justice, baby, in the flesh, and Donald J. Trump is about to get a Great. Big. Dose of it.

And then. The Fani Willis implosion was streamed live and covered widely, so I have no plans to go through it here, but the Free Beacon has put together an enjoyable montage of life advice from the grease fire that was her testimony:

This is the brilliant legal mind that was going to take down a former president. With her A-team of similarly brilliant legal minds, by the way. The reaction was slightly different than the build-up:

Correct.

We’ll be doing this again, meeting one tough genius after another who has the guts and the sharpness to change it all. The yearning for this transformative figure, the psychological hunger that creates this endless line of new political saviors, tells us that we live in a republic of perennial adult children.

But you already knew that.