Insufferably self-important and cloyingly obsequious

The title would make a good alternate title for a Jonathan Safran Foer novel/Natalie Portman email chain. But it is indeed also an apt description for the resignation letter that the Worst Attorney General in American history sent to the caporegime:

And nothing quite became the job he did like the letter he wrote leaving it. It is written in what appears to be the closest thing this republic has for Courtier Speak. It is by turns insufferably self-important and cloyingly obsequious. I mean, Christamighty, even Machiavelli was against flattery of this truckling sort. Hamlet calls it “the candied tongue.”

In this letter, Barr makes Polonius look like Clint Eastwood. And I especially enjoy the Pip-Pip-Old-Bean, Windsor-Court spelling of “honored.” There’s majesty in that extra “U,” I tell you.

Charles also reminds us that Barr has always been like this:

On Christmas Eve, on advice from Barr, Bush pardoned six men involved in the Iran-Contra crimes. Four of them already had been convicted. One of the others was Weinberger, who had not yet gone on trial, and who now never would. Special counsel Walsh went into orbit, but there was nothing he could do. Bush’s pardon power was absolute, even in the case of the preemptive pardon of Weinberger, over whom Walsh no longer had any leverage. It was the final act in the Iran-Contra cover-up, and William Barr left the office of Attorney General for the first time with those pardons hanging over his head. So now he’s gone again, like a crow leaving the Capitol. Some men walk with giants. William Barr walked behind giants. With a shovel.

Again, the Reagan years were pretty much the dry run for all of this.