But it’s also why I’m painfully aware that, so far, both Congress and the press have responded to the report by indulging in pettiness and sensationalism, instead of fulfilling the roles that the Framers of the Constitution envisioned. Tomorrow, they will have the chance, instead, to enable Americans and their representatives to make well-informed political choices, and to ensure that this remains a free country governed by the rule of law, not by bombast or political partisanship.

Read: The dirty secret of Mueller’s testimony? Voters might not care.

The Mueller report runs 448 pages, and the average person has had little opportunity to read and study it in depth. Congress can satisfy its responsibility to ensure that the American voting public has access to compelling facts on the important national issues that the Mueller report raises, as it logically pursues the legislative avenues that the Framers laid down for it in the Constitution. The press also has a role in separating fact from fiction, and evidence from opinion. And there is much that the press can do with respect to reporting the facts underlying the Mueller findings that hasn’t been done yet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the reporting to date has been less than optimal. Here is the chance to improve that.

I’m not naive. At least some members of Congress will instead vigorously, but imprudently in constitutional terms, view the Mueller hearing as an extension of the presidential campaign or a chance to gain partisan advantage. Too often, both parties in Congress act as if they are in a parliament, with the president treated like a prime minister to be defended or toppled. But our Congress was intended to act as an independent branch, exercising the checks and balances that distinguish our system from the parliamentary government against which the Founders rebelled.

I also expect some media reports to reflect the capital’s fixation on defining political winners and losers in a manner that too often buries substance with sound bites. We’re certain to hear noisy charges and countercharges about “witch hunts” and intelligence-community conspiracies from the right, and presidential falsehoods and ignorance from the left. But if Congress and the press do their jobs, the public may now get the answers it deserves.

The report itself lays out a series of issues that clearly require additional examination. Volume I of the report, for example, focuses on whether the president and his campaign staff coordinated with Russian agents. This has often been framed as a question of “collusion.” Collusion is not a term employed in federal criminal law, and the fixation on it has been a diversion. Although Mueller’s team did not find prosecutable evidence of conspiracy, it did find substantial evidence of a sort of conscious parallelism that is deeply concerning and that likely will necessitate a legislative remedy.