Prior to Robert Mueller’s appearance before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees, wildly optimistic democrats billed it as a game changer. The logic went like this. Since few Americans had bothered to read his 448 page, two-volume report, Mueller’s appearance would make its results live and vivid. You know, instead of the boring book, the more exciting movie version.

Alas, for those anticipating a summer blockbuster, the hearings were a static, tedious, B movie at best. The villains were windbag, Republican pols cudgeling a defenseless old man. The good guys were self-righteous Democratic pols coddling Grandpa Mueller. And the star was well past his prime. He didn’t seem to have lost a step, but several laps.

I found myself remembering a classic FedEx ad entitled “It’s So Easy.” You can find it on YouTube and see for yourself if the analogy is just. The ad shows a clueless twit in a suit with a package on his desk while the voice-over promises that sending a package with FedEx is “so easy even a Vice President can do it.” It then shows an older man in a fancier office. “Even a president can do it.” Finally, an ancient, baffled, wizened gnome at a huge desk. “Even the Chairman of the Board can do it.’ But he can’t remember to say “FedEx pick up my package” into the phone.

I’m sympathetic to Mueller’s underperformance since I’m close to his age. The memory does begin to go. The hearing isn’t what it used to be, young, cocksure whippersnappers make one weary, and even if you can still mix it up, why bother. Life is too short for pointless jousting wth twerps.

As if laboring under the handicaps inflicted by time’s relentless ravages, Mueller was also forced to deal with restrictions imposed by the Barr Justice Department which is collaborating in the Trump cover-up. Mueller was told not to go beyond the public version of the report, not to discuss anything contained in the redacted portions, not to discuss the conduct of uncharged third parties (Trump), or any facts or legal conclusions with respect to uncharged individuals.

As a result of this straitjacket, most of Mueller’s testimony consisted of two hundred or so repetitions of a few stock phrases. “That’s generally accurate.,” “I relay on what’s in the report,” “I’m not going to speak to that.” For the viewing audience this made the show unenlightening at best, absurd at worst.

Hamstrung by the combination of age and Barr’s strictures, Mueller often came across as a clueless old fool. So, when asked if the Trump campaign’s use of material stolen by Russian cybercriminals and leaked by Wikileaks was unethical, all Mueller felt he was allowed to say was, “It required investigation.

Mueller was also put in an unfortunate position by being forced to do his tightrope act all but alone. The report might bear his name, but he was management, not labor. Her assembled a team to do the investigating, interviewing, prosecuting, drafting and editing of a report on which he signed off before going home to retirement.

Anyone who has worked for a large organization knows the drill. The CEO, eminence grise, or figurehead appears to introduce the finished product, but the experts who did the actual nuts and bolts labor are out of sight. In this case, it might have been far better for the supporting cast to have speaking parts in the presentation.

After all, Mueller assembled almost two dozens superstar attorneys wth deep expertise in prosecuting tax crimes, fraud, cybercrime, national security, counterintelligence, public corruption, and money laundering, along with a support staff of dozens of IRA and FBI investigators. They would not have had to have their memories refreshed about what Fusion GPS was or other minutiae.

So, the big show was a flop, and in the land of the TV president it is the phony spectacle that matters not the facts. Actually, for those willing to look beyond the theatrical trappings, the reality remained the same.

A foreign enemy used various illegal means to influence an American election in favor of a presidential candidate. The candidate, Trump, welcomed their help and even solicited it, and when the cops showed up to investigate numerous crimes, domestic and foreign, the President and his henchmen, obstructed justice. Bad enough once, but the bad actors are getting ready to re-stage the same show in 2020.

Does anybody care? Or is a poor presentation of the threat to our nation enough to bore us, disarm us, and leave us naked to our enemies? If we are that feckless, perhaps we deserve for it to be the Trump regime that rings down the final curtain on the longest running democracy on earth while we sit at home immersed in the unreality of reality television.