I hope Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Congress will learn from the experience of 1998 and not take the country down the same path in the absence of some spectacularly good reasons. Those reasons would not include some undisclosed lobbying by Michael Flynn, some possibly questionable business deals by Paul Manafort or some phone calls, emails or meetings with the Russian ambassador.

They should not include Comey’s crude efforts to frustrate and then entrap Trump that were short-circuited by his firing. The leaking scheme, and his actions in the Hillary investigation, disqualify him as even a credible witness. (Was he lying then when he refused to say it was a criminal investigation only then or now?)

The Democrats, just like the Republicans of 1998, have staked their party not on the issues, like inequality, healthcare or jobs, but on this battle to delegitimize Trump. They have driven it from a national joke to a national scandal, as every contact by anyone associated with the Trump campaign has become a banner headline from anonymous and increasingly questionable sources. They turned Russia into kryptonite.