Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me

As a former professional partisan, I never thought I’d look back decades to my political beginnings and find the map that points to our current moment, when there is serious doubt whether the democracy we took for granted at the time will continue to exist. Despite all the posturing and gamesmanship and at times skullduggery back then, political opponents shared an understanding that the process enforced by our Constitution would prevail, no one would get everything they wanted every time, and the state of the union would remain strong. As it turns out, too many people like me stuck our heads in the sand, swallowed our doubts, let the unacceptable slide, convinced ourselves it was in the interest of the greater good, and never dreamed that we would look back and realize that a failure to say “Enough!” had led to our country’s biggest existential crisis since the Civil War.

I entered what as I now see as our long national unraveling during the Clinton impeachment, as an adviser to independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, and over the next couple of decades as I remained personally and professionally dedicated to him. Only in the last three years, thanks to the hold of an unhinged liar and mega-grifter on my party and so it seems my old mentor, have I been able to recognize that Starr has been at the intersection of so many wrong turns our country has made. And…