PanThe New Republic\"Honig’s thesis is that Barr did a particularly poor job because he \'had never set foot in a courtroom to prosecute a criminal case\' ... It is a tidy and superficially appealing theory—one that tracks the intuition that people with government experience and expertise might be less corruptible and pliable than political newcomers. But its flaws and blind spots may reveal more about the assumptions of legal pundits—former prosecutors in particular—than it says about Bill Barr himself ... A large portion of Hatchet Man is in fact about Honig ... At...times, the connections to Barr are strained at best ... The argument that Barr suffered from being inexperienced is a difficult one to make considering that Barr is the only person since 1853 to have served twice as attorney general ... There are some intriguing ways to try to explain how Barr’s performance could have varied so dramatically between his first and second stints ... Evaluating these possibilities would have required a serious effort to understand Barr and his life, as well as the changing political landscape between the first Bush and Trump presidencies, but Honig does not explore these possibilities or others. In the narrowness of its scope, Honig’s book reflects the limitations of the prosecutorial methodology—a backward-looking exercise that usually involves taking a factual record, devising a totalizing explanation and narrative that fits it (the simpler, the better), and reinforcing the best facts for that account at every opportunity while doing your best to accommodate or explain away inconvenient ones.
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