Now that Jeff Sessions, our former Attorney General, has been gone for a while, maybe it is time to give him a second look. Maybe it is time to even give credit where credit is due.

Yes, admittedly, he is not attractive individual. Physically, there is something of the weasel or the rodent about him— maybe even a touch of the rat. And, clearly, he was a left-over from another age. If he wasn’t a racist, certainly his ideas about race and affirmative action seemed anachronistic. His loyalty to the Trump administration, even while that administration undercut and insulted him, was also problematic.

Yet, two things we can say for him. First, he was capable of some degree of decency and honor. His decision to recuse himself the Russia investigation took something like real integrity. And, after the pipe bomb incident earlier this year, Sessions did take a strong stand, and said that violence had no place in American politics.

Second, he did endure much, and quietly. Somehow, he withstood the toxic presence of Donald Trump, and even ignored the hundred humiliations to which that grotesque creature subjected him. While we have to wonder at the degree of masochism required by that, still, you have admire his self-control.

So, in retrospect, we may judge him with some degree of respect. If he was not a hero, and should never have been made Attorney General, he at least comported himself with some dignity.

Which is something we cannot say about so very many other Republicans, in the administration and without, in this curious age of Trump and corruption.

~mjt