Breathless press reports notwithstanding, the defining vignette in William P. Barr’s scintillating autobiography is not his White House confrontation with Donald Trump immediately after the attorney general torpedoed the then-president’s “stolen election” con job.

The image that sears is from nearly two years earlier, at the National Cathedral in 2018. Official Washington was gathered to pay last respects to George H. W. Bush, after the 94-year-old former president’s passing on November 30 — establishment luminaries of both major parties, along with senior officials of the incumbent administration, led by President Trump in the role of anti-establishment diva.

Bill Barr’s place as a historic American figure is assured by the manner in which he met his turbulent times. But his status as such owes to his being one of only two people to serve as the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer twice. (The other was John Crittenden, before the Civil War.) Barr came to national prominence in Bush 41’s Republican administration. At the memorial service for his former boss, who became for him a mentor and a model to which American presidents should aspire, Barr could not help but sense that he had feet planted in two different worlds.

He stood in the company of his fellow Bush officials, who had presided over the collapse of the Soviet Union. Together, they had waged the Gulf War to rapid, decisive victory, with the president skillfully forging a global coalition of forces. Barr helped Bush wrangle support from a Congress overwhelmingly controlled by reluctant Democrats — leveraging the president’s desire to project inter-branch solidarity combined with his willingness to exert inherent commander-in-chief powers as necessary to vindicate American interests. Reminiscing about Bush’s understated wisdom and patriotism, Barr felt the pride of having been part of a talented executive team. Though times were perceptibly changing, he remained attached to an era when it was still possible to put partisanship aside for the good of the country.

Across the cathedral, a gem of the Washington that Trump had rebranded “the Swamp,” milled the team he was poised to join. Barr had already accepted Trump’s offer to become his embattled administration’s attorney general, replacing Jeff Sessions. In a move emblematic of his truculent narcissism, Trump had humiliated Sessions before firing him — a loyalist kicked to the curb for prioritizing his Justice Department duties over incessant demands that the AG’s power be put in the service of Trump’s perceived political needs, in particular, the imperative of shutting down a baseless probe of his campaign’s “collusion” with Russia.

Barr knew what he was getting into. He was too savvy a Washington player, too committed a Justice Department institutionalist, and too much a principled late-20th-century conservative to delude himself about Donald Trump’s self-destructiveness. Sure, Barr was enticed by a solid Republican agenda — strong law enforcement, defense of the nation’s police departments, judicial appointments in the mold of the late justice Antonin Scalia, robust national defense, the unapologetic pursuit of America’s interests in the world. He thought it an essential course correction from the wayward left turn of Obama-era governance. He knew, though, that absent a family tie, relationships with Trump tended to end badly.

With the encouragement of his old friends, Barr was drawn back to a job he loved and was uniquely good at, overcoming deep reservations. These had little to do with the DOJ’s nonstop fire-drill ethos — the book’s title, “One Damn Thing after Another,” is an homage to Ford-administration attorney general Ed Levi’s pitch-perfect description of the gig. Barr took the helm anxious to serve the presidency once again, but with no illusions about the president. Doing the job honorably would be combustible.

And so it was. In the Trumpian pattern, the relationship soared at first, as Barr won high public marks among Trump fans for his mastery of the DOJ’s scope and his moxie in jousting with Democrats and their media allies. But things deteriorated as Trump publicly undermined the DOJ’s work with unhinged tweets. Matters worsened with presidential tirades over Barr’s refusal to indict Trump nemeses James Comey and Andrew McCabe — the former director and deputy director of the FBI, whose poor judgment Barr excoriates while explaining its salient difference from criminal guilt.

The breaking point neared as John Durham, the senior and widely admired prosecutor Barr had assigned to probe the origins of the FBI’s Trump–Russia “collusion” farce, failed to complete his methodical investigation as the election loomed. In response to another Trump Twitter fusillade, Barr made clear that Durham — who had been set back by Covid restrictions and delays in the DOJ inspector general’s wide-ranging inquiry into FBI misconduct — would not tie his probe to a political calendar, would not charge government officials absent compelling evidence of “meat and potatoes” crimes, and would not be indicting former president Obama or former vice president Biden (Trump’s 2020 opponent), who were not subjects of the investigation.

Egged on by his gaggle of outside legal advisers (some of whom, Barr quips, even had law degrees), Trump seethed as Barr and the FBI ignored his insistence that seemingly anyone named Biden should be arrested over the New York Post’s exposé of Hunter Biden’s intriguing abandoned-laptop files. It turns out that Hunter was already under federal investigation, but Barr had announced that Justice Department protocols against gratuitous measures that could influence the electorate — the kind that willful Iran–Contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had deployed against Bush 41 on the eve of the 1992 election — would be enforced on his watch, further enraging the president.

Finally, the relationship exploded in the familiar Trump acrimony. Barr publicly announced that the Justice Department had found no evidence of election fraud on a scale that could reverse then–president elect Biden’s victory over the incumbent. The wind was thus taken out of Trump’s “stop the steal” sails. Barr’s announcement gave Republicans cover to distance themselves from the clown show that Trump’s stolen-election gambit had become, ensuring that only a die-hard cabal would continue to deny reality. It also stiffened the DOJ’s spine to defy the president when, after Barr left the administration, a desperate Trump pressured the department’s acting leaders to back his vacant fraud claims.

In the final, otherworldly White House confrontation, the president ranted that Barr must “hate Trump,” but was left flustered when it turned out that the AG’s grasp of detail was such that each instance of alleged election theft was easily countered. To the limited extent Trump was not simply talking nonsense, Barr insisted that he’d been served rations of utter “bullshit” by his legal team.

Slamming the table, Trump impetuously “fired” Barr, only to be promptly talked out of it by some of his remaining adult advisers, who frantically intercepted the AG’s security team as it attempted to escort him from the White House in the pouring rain. Barr agreed to stay on, but declined to resume the meeting, opting to head home for “a stiff Scotch.” An ostensibly amicable departure ensued shortly afterwards. Barr was retired by the time of the Capitol riot, which he unsparingly condemned.

The subtitle of the book refers to the “memoirs” of an attorney general. The plural is used advisedly. Barr’s first and second acts at the Justice Department helm, separated by nearly three decades, were so different in time and tenor as to be like distinct lives. Beyond that, Barr has lived a rich American life in the realms of faith and family, and in the private practice of law at the telecom industry’s cutting edge.

As is par for today’s course, contretemps with Donald Trump dominate the headlines about Barr’s book. What it may be best remembered for, however, is its vivid portrayal of President Bush’s steady executive leadership. Barr had experienced it first in the tumultuous Seventies, when he was a young, aspiring CIA analyst — before the law’s siren song enraptured him — and the elder Bush arrived as agency director. Bush steered the CIA out of its scandals. He did it by subordinating himself to the mission. It was a war hero’s selfless patriotism, the antithesis of a personality cult.

What most changed in the ensuing decades is the press. The corruption was already evident in 1992, when the media colluded with the Clinton campaign to drive Bush from office. Despite an 89 percent approval rating after the Gulf War, the president was undone by the ceaseless portrayal of a normal business-cycle downturn as if it were a recession of Depression-level ruin. The gold standard of accurate, fact-based coverage was already giving way to “the narrative.”

Things are much worse now. The modern world of unabashedly partisan news presentation exacerbates the tendencies toward political tribalism. Bill Barr is uniquely equipped for today’s law-enforcement challenges, but he is proudly a man of yesterday’s sensibilities. His second tour of duty at the Justice Department was something of an experiment: Does the country still demand evenhanded law enforcement; or should we expect the Justice Department, like most everything else, to be abused as a partisan weapon? Barr’s answer is a hopeful one: one standard of justice, without fear or favor. For America’s sake, he’d better be right.