Conventional wisdom says that impeaching President Trump will not only cause Democrats to lose control of the House of Representatives but guarantee his reelection to the White House to boot. But Trump himself has demonstrated time and time again that it makes no sense to apply conventional wisdom to his presidency. Indeed, “unprecedented” is the word that best defines it.
That’s why I welcome this “daring” political move:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, a dramatic turnaround by the Democratic leader that sets up a constitutional and political clash pitting the Congress against the nation’s chief executive. …
Pelosi’s change of heart comes after days of consulting allies and follows reports that Trump may have pressured a foreign leader to investigate former vice president and potential 2020 campaign rival Joe Biden and his family. …
Pelosi had been reluctant to endorse impeachment, resisting the extraordinary step for months despite pressure from the party’s liberal base and several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
(The Washington Post, September 24, 2019)
Yet, truth be told, this development is so anticlimactic, it barely warrants comment. Granted, you’d never know this given the saturation media coverage – complete with partisan jousting over the significance of Trump’s latest high crimes and some whistleblower’s (“urgent and credible”) complaints against him.
But I’d be willing to bet my life savings that, whatever caused Pelosi’s change of heart, it is no higher crime than the high crimes Robert Mueller delineated in his famous report months ago. That report should have been the tipping point for Pelosi – as it was for me and many others.
Here is how I duly registered my call for the impeachment of this sui generis SOB in “Democrats Left Scrambling After Robert Mueller’s Rambling Testimony,” July 27, 2019:
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No doubt Mueller failed to serve the Democrats’ purposes by emulating Sgt. Joe Friday (or the cinematic Eliot Ness). But the fact remains that he cited so many credible charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against Trump, they make those Leon Jaworski cited against Nixon seem like prosecutorial overreach.
Frankly, if Democrats fail to impeach, history will judge them as every bit as complicit in normalizing Trump’s willful misconduct as Republicans. And, yes, they can impeach while (despite or to spite Trump) the intelligence agencies work to foil Russia’s manifest intent to attack US elections in 2020 even more insidiously than it did in 2016.
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But I fear, no matter the formality, this impeachment inquiry will amount to little more than a political farce. This, notwithstanding the gravity of the constitutional crisis afoot. In fact, the Democrats have a constitutional duty to impeach Trump – if only to establish, for the congressional record, the myriad ways he has betrayed his oath of office.
Unfortunately, the Republicans have telegraphed their cult-like intent to use their voting majority in the Senate to acquit Trump. Hell, they hail him as “chosen by God.” Therefore, for them, the rule of law and the general welfare of the republic be damned.
This is why voting in the 2020 general election – to boot out not just him but every Republican who voted against impeaching him – will be the only way to hold Trump to account.
In the meantime, his trial might provide the only thing about Trump’s presidency that is not unprecedented. After all, we need only look to the impeachment trials of former presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 to see how this one will play out.
Still, a Congress as divided against itself as this one cannot help but present an impeachment trial that is more Monty Python’s Flying Circus than A Man for All Seasons.
Caveat
Obama spent his entire presidency hoping against hope that the “fever” that caused Republicans to put party before country would break. Therefore, any sane person would be forgiven forlorn hope in this respect. After all, that fever has metastasized into a cult-like worship of party leader Donald J. Trump.
But all hope might not be lost. Because only 23 of 53 Republican senators are up for election in 2020. It might finally dawn on the 30 who are not that, if Trump is either impeached or defeated, the spell he holds over their party would disappear, and with it the threat he poses to their reelection prospects in 2022 and 2024, respectively.
This might embolden them to do more than just tweet consternation about his impeachable offenses. Specifically, the likes of Mitt Romney might soon realize that impeaching Trump is the best thing they could do not just for the country but for their careers. This spell-breaking realization might occur even more so among retiring senators like Richard Burr. After all, they’re facing the defining moment not just of their careers but of their legacies.
Incidentally, many esteemed commentators seem convinced that Republican leaders are just waiting for the right moment to emulate their predecessors whose Nixonian spell broke on the eve of his impeachment trial.
But this not only misreads history; it smacks of wishful thinking. Because it wasn’t the congressional process afoot so much as the revelations about Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors that shocked the conscience of Republicans back then. Notably, it was the revelation, during congressional hearings, that Nixon had a recording device in the White House that documented many of his impeachable offenses.
Granted, we’re still waiting for congressional hearings to commence. But we already know that Trump has committed at least one thousand more impeachable offenses in broad daylight than Nixon committed in the dark of night. Therefore, if today’s Republicans were going to emulate their predecessors, they would have been telegraphing their intent to impeach and remove him from office mere months into his presidency. Or, having already failed one thousand moments of truth, they surely would have begun doing so right after Special Counsel Robert Mueller published his damning report.
This is why I am convinced only the craven realization that Trump’s tweets cannot affect their reelection prospects will break the spell he has on them. Even so, hope springs eternal.
Related commentaries:
Mueller rambling…
Republicans: Trump chosen by God…
Mueller report…