Remember the comic relief in the Lincoln movie in which James Spader and a claque of bewhiskered—and be-whiskey’ed—rascals bought or blackmailed or swindled enough votes to make sure the 13th Amendment passed Congress and we abolished slavery?

Oppo.

Remember Donald Segretti, played to the hilt by Robert Walden, in All the President’s Men, trying to schmooze Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein? Walden delivers the line, “Carl, you wanna cup of coffee?” with the toothiest grin this side of Bugs Bunny to the point where you’re sure that, out of frame, Segretti is lifting Bernstein’s wallet?

Oppo.

Remember James Reynolds? Maria Reynolds? Alexander Hamilton? Aaron Burr? Gunshots over Weehawken?

Oppo.

Andrew Jackson, bedeviled by attacks on his wife? And Peggy Eaton, the wife of his Navy secretary, whose marriage scandalized and split Jackson’s Cabinet?

Oppo.

The Arkansas Project, whence came all manner of Clinton conspiracies that remain alive to this day?

Oppo.

Remember the central pivot in All the King’s Men, still the greatest novel ever written about American politics?

“It all began, as I have said, when the Boss, sitting in the black Cadillac which sped through the night, said to me (to Me who was what Jack Burden, the student of history, had grown up to be) "There is always something." And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge." And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something.”

There is always something.

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That’s the philosophy of Oppo. Faith in that philosophy will get you far in American politics. It will get you even farther if you are genuinely mendacious, or if you can feign naivete and/or horror when confronted by the inherent (if often truthless) messiness of Oppo. Witness, for example, the latest OMIGAWD Blockbuster! brought to us courtesy of The Washington Post. I spent the morning reading it and almost everything I gleaned from it was material that I’d already known about, either from the reporting of David Corn in Mother Jones, or through work done by reporters at CNN. I guess there is something of a revelation in that we now know precisely who it was who picked up the tab for the work on the dossier on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee after whatever Republican campaign it was that kicked off the research had given up on it.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research. After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Apparently, Elias denied this to a number of reporters during the campaign—another shocker to anyone under the age of nine. This is why it set off Maggie Haberman of The New York Times on the electric Twitter machine Tuesday night; she tweeted darkly about Certain Someones who had lied to her about this “with sanctimony.” (On the same platform, back on January 21, Ms. Haberman earlier demurred from using the word “lie” in connection with the newly inaugurated president*.) My pearls are now dust from the clutching.

There is always something.

(And, just for laughs, how’s about we find out who exactly the Republican candidate was who hired this job out in the first place. It’s laughable that everybody seems to be sure who it was, but nobody’s willing to say it out loud. This leads the cynical mind to believe that the mushily identified source for the WaPo article—“people familiar with the matter”—might be connected to the campaign that originally contracted out the work. Remember when Jayson Blair was going to make us all cautious about the use of anonymous sources?)

Look, I would prefer that Oppo not be a part of our politics, but, unfortunately, that horse left the barn at approximately the same time that our ancestors left the primordial sea. (Josh Green wrote one of the definitive pieces on modern Oppo thirteen years ago in The Atlantic.) As long as we trust our politics to human beings as failed and flawed as we are, then Oppo is going to be with us as a self-governing democratic people. And Oppo is not always destructive. Indeed, in this case, if it reveals something more about the accommodations between various Russian oligarchs and the president*, it may even be said to have been of some benefit. However, that would depend on the political utility of the Oppo, and the willingness of the elite political press to allow itself to be used along with it. At the moment, the prospects are not rosy.

Christopher Steele Getty Images

Right now, as the Mueller investigation grinds on, we are seeing a determined effort on the part of the president*’s allies to change the subject—or, at least, to put the whole thing into a Both Sides context that will reduce the whole issue to easily digestible mush. In addition to the WaPo scooplet, fed to the paper by those mysterious people familiar with the situation, we have seen the reemergence of Rep. Devin Nunes, the hopelessly compromised White House bobo and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who, in alliance with Rep. Trey Gowdy, the lopheaded Javert of Benghazi, Benghazi, BENGHAZI!, is trying to restart the whole business about the sale of uranium to Russia.

Whether or not this strategy works is completely a function of how the elite political media respond to it, and whether or not said elite political media is intimidated by the fact that 36 percent of the American people are liable to believe anything as long as they don’t have to believe that the president* is playing footsie with Vladimir Putin. This 36 percent of our fellow citizens live out their political lives listening to the same radio and TV stars who will beat this latest revelation into mulch. Again, I am not optimistic.

Whether or not this strategy works is completely a function of how the elite political media respond to it.

Already, we’ve seen that the NYT’s chronic Clinton Derangement Syndrome may be engaged. Already, the WaPo is out with a very defensive analysis of its own story. Believe me, there are editors and news directors who are dying for this story to go pale and ordinary and who are terrified of confronting the awful truth of a presidency as failed as this one. The president* is already out there driving nails into his palms. His people are going to love this. Sean Hannity’s tumescence will be visible from Mars.

But Mueller’s investigators are still on the job, and I get the feeling we wouldn’t be seeing all this smoke being thrown around by the mysterious People Who Are Familiar if somebody important weren’t starting to hear very loud footsteps behind them. There is something of a frenzy about the last couple of days. But, I am willing to be open-minded on this. I don’t think the nation ever will truly heal from the damage done by the Steele Dossier until the American people get to see every word in it and watch any collateral evidence that Steele developed to support its conclusions.

Like, for example, videotapes. Democracy demands this.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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