If you are interested in James Comey’s now monumental war with President Trump, you might want to pass over this post and get on over to MSNBC or Fox News. The media will, as media does, obsess on the arguments and name-calling, and I won’t. I try not to do the nasty here, the perpetual and endless argument is getting tiresome.

I’d actually like to talk about the book.

The most surprising thing about Higher Loyalty is that it isn’t about Donald Trump, or even about James Comey’s gripes with Donald Trump. If you’re watching the new, you might not know that that represents about five pages in the book. If you’re expecting a lot of dirt and fireworks, you’ll be disappointed.

I know editors and publishers. Argument sells books, not thought. Comey did what he had to do.

But in this book, Trump is almost an afterthought, an obvious and savvy marketing ploy to get some – a lot – of publicity.  Without some juicy name-calling (Trump has orange skin and small hands), Comey would never have gotten onto every major TV and radio show in the country, journalism isn’t much interested in ethics.

Just ask Sean Hannity.

The book is one man’s argument for ethical decision-making. I got the feeling Comey has moved on from last year, even though the President obviously has not. He is just a horse for Comey to ride to The View and CNN. Every tweet is worth ten thousand book sales.

These are  two men who grasp the essentials of modern media, and in that context, as well as a political one, their conflict has become titanic. Lots of noise, is there any light?

I think so.

Comey has an almost 19th century view of ethics and leadership. He will soon be giving great lectures at Harvard. Our leaders have abandoned principles for argument and victory, he argues. I got nostalgic reading about the idea of our country coming  before ideology or political party.

Today, we have the plague of the left and the right.

In our case, the old  days were just a few years ago, we can almost all remember them.

I liked the writer of this book, he struck me as decent, self-serving, intelligent, funny,  poised and pleased with himself. He is not perfect.

Comey is straight out of the lost America of universal values when he invokes his view of patriotism, which is a life of service and the fight for justice, the exercise of power with compassion.

Trump, who presides over our country,  cannot open his mouth without lying or being vulgar, cruel or obnoxious, even when he is right.

Comey, on the other head, is what we used to call All-American, at least before they came came up with the “Deep State.” Anyone who disagrees with us is not only wrong, but treasonous and should be in jail. Trump embodies this new and very different way of leading.

It was inevitable that the two should meet on this bloody modern American battleground, the media.

I got the book yesterday and sat up late into the night reading it because I am frankly more interested in the issues of personal ethics and values that Comey has raised, than in who is lying about their dinner at the White House.

Comey is unusual.

I don’t read too many books by politicians who are obsessed with philosophers Reinhold Niebuhr or Thomas More. I finished about half the book at one sitting, and then skipped back and forth to finish the rest.

A Higher Loyalty  is a values memoir, it’s full of ideas and reflections and anecdotes about what thoughtful people want to consider when they make choices and decisions in an  ugly and turbulent time. And about how Comey’s view of morality was shaped as a child, student and prosecutor.

I like Comey’s long view. He does not seem angry, and he knows his history:  nothing about this phase of American politics is really new, and it too shall pass.

Comey is nothing if not calm, and his book is appropriately grounding  to read. He offers real perspective in a troubling time, and he has seen a lot and knows a lot. But he is not in any panic. The Republic is not about to fall.

For all of the hoopla, there is relatively little of Donald Trump in the book. This is a personal, not really a political book. It’s  the story of an agonizingly reflective and intelligent public figure with the ego of a Tyrannosaurus and a Jesuit’s circular sometimes head-spinning fussing about truth.

Comey seems to me to be a decent and sincere man, an overthinker whose self-arguments about doing the right thing have gotten him into trouble and perhaps clouded his judgment during that insane summer  of 2016, when many of us felt our country slipping away.

No FBI director should ever be seen as tipping a Presidential election in one way or the other, and if that happens, something is really wrong.

For all of his pondering about truth and responsibility, Comey ducks responsibility for that one. When asked, he simply replies “what a great question,” an annoying evasion and deflection technique familiar to any reporter.

Comey seems genuinely surprised at the suggestion that he made the wrong choices in his public statements about Hillary Clinton and her wretched e-mails. Few political consultants or pundits doubt that he, not Trump’s vision for the future, was the reason Hillary Clinton lost the election.

Whatever one’s beliefs, that is a heavy cross to bear, and history will put it squarely on his back.

To me, Comey’s unsatisfactory answers and total dodging of responsibility for that is the most serious flaw in the book, not that his snarky mentions of the color Trump’s tanned skin or his small hands.

From the book, Comey strikes me as someone who doesn’t take a walk without considering the ethical implications of what he is doing. Is this the right time? In the right place? Will I disturb my neighbors? Neglect my children? Should I be doing something else? It sounds tiresome but the book isn’t,  because Comey is a good story-teller, he uses juicy and compelling anecdotes to make his point, like any good writer.

And because he is so right about so much of what he writes.

He reminds me that although our media presents the world as black-and-white, there are many shades of gray.

It seems likely to me that Comey spun himself into a big ego trip that summer, and played God.

He overstepped his boundaries, took a larger role in history than was appropriate.

Th0se are not small things.

But Comey doesn’t want to deal with the implications of that in Higher Loyalty. A truly great memoir accepts the worst in the author as well as the best, so this is not a truly great memoir. It came close, though. That doesn’t undercut the value of the book to me, it makes it even more compelling.

Like me this big man screws up tough decisions.

We are all, after all, flawed, even FBI directors with a conscience and a narcissistic streak.

Comey is a Shakespearean hero, not an American hero. He is too complicated for that,  both flawed and vulnerable, and he admits to both, even if he can’t admit to making the Big Mistake.  John Wayne was not complicated, he is the hero Americans want. He doesn’t think much, he just acts. There is nothing to agonize about in the Duke’s simple world.

Comey never claims perfection or purity, to his credit. Now, he is fighting for the right thing in a book. He wants to be useful, he says. Perhaps he will be. He seems determined to come up with some good after The Fall, he believes in that.

Comey’s response to this charge of irresponsible meddling is always the same when he is criticized: “you might well be right,” which is, to me, a cop-out, a kind of moral abdication. On this, his critics are right, and he is wrong.  He gets folksy and brushes it off. “Lordy, I hope not.” That is not in keeping with Reinhold Niebuhr.

“It’s always wise,” wrote Niebuhr, “to seek the truth in our opponents error, and the error in our own truth.” Comey seems incapable of doing that.

There is universal, bipartisan and irrefutable testimony that Comey screwed up, he should have kept his mouth shut during the presidential campaign. I think he knows it, too. He is too honest and self-reflective – and smart – not to see it, not quite strong enough to do it.

I want to say though, that I am liking the book a lot. It is well-written, even gripping. It’s timely and in a time of rage and argument,  shockingly thoughtful about leadership and public life.

I trust Comey, he is credible to me. I don’t think he lies.

That makes the book very human, from his accounts of losing a child, to suffering from savage bullying (anyone who says “Lordy” is sure to get bullied) to the terrifying night a rapist and robber invaded his home in New Jersey when he and his brother were alone.

His agonizing over whether or not to prosecute the famed TV personality Martha Stewart for insider trading when he was U.S. Attorney for New York was especially compelling. I know the Trump stuff by heart, I don’t need to spend $34.99 to read about it again.

Comey’s life as a prosecutor and FBI Director was all about moral decisions, ethics and the law.

There is no doubt he is a passionate believer in the structure and the machinery of justice, a cornerstone of the American Experience. He is, in almost every possible way the spiritual, biological, ethical and human opposite of our President. No wonder the two have so much contempt for one another, they are literally on opposite ends of the human spectrum. Each is the Anti Christ to the other.

Comey is concerned that President Trump’s lies and vicious attacks on critics are numbing us, and we will soon come to see them as normal. They are not normal, he argues, they are not right.

I recommend the book highly. This is the story of man who loves his country, and loves the law, and is deeply troubled by the people running our government today. He wants us to continue to wake up and think about what we are hearing and seeing every day.

I am not one of those people who believe the world has come to an end with the appearance of President Trump, as unfit as he is.

I think he came for a reason. He was necessary to awaken us to what our way of live and traditions are and mean. And we are surely awake.

When the smoke from this “fire,” as Comey calls it, clears away, we will be better for it.  We seem to have left half the country behind over the last few decades,  and we didn’t seem to notice or care that they were suffering. Now we are noticing and being held accountable..

Thoughtful people are, as Comey says,  staring in horror at the increasingly vicious partisanship that has grown all around us. The new political ethos seems to be to win by all costs and any means. Politics is about conquering and battering, not leading or healing. It’s become a cold and cruel thing.

“Far from creating a new norm where lying is widely accepted,” writes Comey, “the Trump presidency has ignited a focus on truth and ethics. Parents are talking to their children about truth-telling, about respect for all people, about rejecting prejudice and hate. Schools and religious institutions are  talking about values-driven leadership.”

The next president, says Comey, no matter the party, will surely emphasize values – truth, integrity, respect, and tolerance – in ways an American leader hasn’t needed to for more than forty years. The fire will make something grow.”

I very much share this idea that what is happening in our country was needed, an angry and frightening convulsion that awakened so many people who were asleep, and made us realize that what we had taken for granted cannot be taken for granted.

Our task is not to argue on Facebook, but to do good, and live our lives in a benevolent and ethical way. Comey got himself caught up in an ugly, raging storm, it is not the first in our country, it will not be the last. When the fire finally burns out, there is a lot of good to come.

I consider that a powerful and important – and useful – message.

The question for Comey, and for me, has nothing to do with the left and the right, two mostly bankrupt and outdated ideologies. It is, rather, what do we believe? What will we fight for? To what do we owe our highest loyalty? The left or the right? Or to the very idea of a democracy.

At the beginning of this provocative and surprisingly engaging book, Comey, for perhaps the first time in the history of American political memoirs, quotes his beloved   Reinhold Niebuhr, the great American theologist, essayist and ethicist:

“Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

My recommendation: I would  read this book, it is thought-provoking, poignant and timely in the most profound way.