Simply because a house is built one brick at a time does not mean it cannot fall all at once
With lower House of Congress impeaching him, President Trump becomes only the third president to suffer this blemish against his name. Trump’s Democratic congressional opponents claim his impeachment represents an affirmation of constitutional order. They claim they were compelled toward this deed to keep the republic intact. Trump’s Republican allies claim his impeachment was a sad moment when a group of left-leaning elitists decided to oust a conservative president simply because he did not adhere to their ideas of decorum and personal carriage. That Trump was a man for the average American; his ways and words are those of the common people. Never able to tolerate this crass and unpolished man, the Democrat elite effectively mounted a political coup against a duly-elected rightwing president, not for anything he did but because of who he is.
Both sides have taken leave of their better senses. America is as great, massive ship whose crew has left their stations to engaging in an intensifying brawl on the vessel’s main deck. As long as the ship is far at sea and the weather relatively calm, the ship may continue this way for some time without much harm to man or vessel. Yet, there may come a time when all aboard will pay a price for their collective inattention to the ship’s direction and proper maintenance.
As dramatically as both sides depict the impeachment, the day of consequential reckoning is not yet before us. That day lies somewhere is the heavy mist of an indefinite future. This impeachment process did nothing to safeguard the constitution from attack for there was no significant attack against it. Likewise, there was no attempted coup against the president. This episode was but a political scum, a power play between two feuding political camps neither of which is heavily concerned that the national political economy is significantly out of kilter.
Because, these people do not really sense any need to amend how the political economy operates, they spend the majority of their time fighting over political control, not competing over political issues. In the main, the differences between the two sides on the most fundamental issues of economic and foreign policies are slight.
What we have is two sides, both Republican and Democratic, led by people too small for the responsibilities of the offices they hold. Petty minds will read the constitution in petty ways. Like two beggars hovering over one piece of bread, a fight is bound to ensue. No matter how well measured a constitution may be, it will be abused when placed in the custody of leaders whose scope of vision is limited to the breadth of their narrow self- interests. Such people will fight and foul even the most prudent design for governance. The current group of American leaders have made a mess of things. In the end, it is not the constitution that elevates the quality of leadership. It is the quality of leadership that either elevates or molests the constitution.
Take a look at the cast of inferior characters in this saga. No one nears the stature of a Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, or Lincoln. We can’t find a FDR, LBJ or JFK among them. The lesser lights of prior eras would tower over this blighted crop. President Trump is a bumptious, amoral creature unfit for any public office where the welfare of more than one person other than himself may be influenced. The man is highly allergic to the truth; deep thoughts may be beyond him. He operates on impulse; sadly, the composition of his character is such that the impulses he generates are largely negative and destructive.
Yet, Trump is not the only dysfunctional person in the leadership crew. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is and old stodgy political operator whose moral compass is as strange as Trump’s. She adamantly opposed impeaching President Bush on war crimes when his regime wilfully manufactured lies to fabricate reasons to invade Iraq. Bush knew the lives of untold numbers of innocents would be wasted yet he embarked on the vile enterprise notwithstanding the great human costs that awaited. Thousands of Americans were needlessly killed and maimed. Well over 500,000 Iraqis lost their lives for nothing. Defense firms run by Bush political cronies engaged in war crimes while fleecing the government of untold billions of dollars. The world was made no better. The only people who benefited where Bush’s war profiteers and the lackeys he installed to run Iraq.
Pelosi vehemently opposed standing Bush in the dock yet rushed to indict Trump based on the imprecise contents of a single phone call, a consequence of which no one was killed or hurt and no money was stolen. For Pelosi, the devote Catholic who claims to piously pray for her enemies, the slightest hint of trouble for the political reputation of a single member of her political hierarchy weighs more importantly than the lives of millions and the illegal invasion of an entire nation. Something is perverse in the mind of someone who sees Trump’s act as great evil but views Bush’s war as a permissible imperial excursion.
Quite rightly, Pelosi is highly unpopular with most Americans. Trump’s approval rating hovers around 40 percent. This is low but Congress has a rating below 20. A good portion of this abysmal showing belongs to Pelosi. She is not an inspiring or visionary person. She cannot see beyond a quick, expedient fix to the problem before her. At most, one can say she is an experienced political tactician who has a difficult time weighing the strategic consequences of the steps she has taken.
The primary reason she is the speaker is her coziness with her party’s wealthiest donors. If she does not like you, party primaries will be tilted against you. Even if you manage to win the nomination, donations to your campaign will trickle into ever smaller, infrequent drops. House members are in perpetual election mode because their terms are but two years. Most Democratic House Members need a helping hand to fuel their campaigns. Thus most of them cannot afford her dislike. They must like her or pretend to do so. For this reason, she is the Speaker. But this also means she is aloof and detached from the mood of the average human being because her universe is peopled mainly by the filthy rich and terribly powerful. Herself the daughter of power, she is but a glorified courier, a broker of campaign funds, elevated to the third highest position in the land.
If not for the Trump impeachment, her time as speaker would be one marked by mediocrity and lack of achievement. Before the impeachment, she was the target of constant murmuring by the progressive wing of the party for her middling ways. The impeachment has brought a certain unity among Congressional Democrats that Pelosi could not by herself attain. The two men she tasked to lead the impeachment charge are also flawed underlings. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is a devious and vindictive man. Much like Trump, he is prepared to bend and skirt the rules to get his way. Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler is a cut above Schiff but still two cuts below what is required at the moment.
We will not spend much time identifying particular Republican Congresspersons. They are all the same. They sound the same. Stand the same. Get mad and indignant in the same manner. They echo the same points. They probably wear the same shoes and socks. It is as if they are being controlled by some master ventriloquist. That ventriloquist bears a name: Fear. They are petrified of losing their congressional seats. They fear the Republican base might abandon them if they do not show complete loyalty to Trump. Thus, none is brave enough to publicly challenge Trump because they need his voters to be their voters come election time.
Trump was impeached on two charges. The first claims he abused power by withholding vital military aid to Ukraine to pressure that nation to investigate Former VP Joe Biden’s son Hunter and his role as a director in the dubious Ukrainian oil firm, Burisma. For the sake of argument, let’s assume the veracity of this claim. Is it enough to justify impeachment? It could be but at the moment the claim is insufficient. Something is missing. They claim Trump did this solely to tarnish Biden this campaign season. That is plausible but it is not the only possible explanation.
Trump could have had a second more legitimate reason. Quite possibly, Hunter Biden was involved in questionable practices. During the space of a few years, the younger Biden and companies allied to him reportedly received over 16 million dollars in payments from Burisma, a company with a long track record of tainted practices. Many of the payments went through Latvia, a notorious money laundering haven. The Latvian authorities identified some of the payments as suspicious. Hunter Biden was personally paid between 500,000 – 1,000,000 dollars a year to be a director on Burisma. Such a position would garner around 100,000 dollars in an American company of Burisma’s size. That Hunter received such enormous fees from a shady firm should give an objective mind pause.
Trump actually could have had a good faith belief that Hunter was involved in malfeasance. For the moment, let us assume Hunter did partake illegally and Trump had evidence thereof. Impeachment would be off the table in that case. Trump would be credited with an unorthodox but justifiable exercise of his duties as the chief law enforcement officer of the nation. The same must then hold true if Trump had a sincere but mistaken belief in Biden’s wrongdoing.
Democrats believed Trump colluded with Russia. The investigation found no such thing. The Democrats fell under no legal penalty for their genuine if mistaken belief. Likewise, Trump should be under no such sanction if he had a sincere belief. That this belief may also benefit him politically would be as immaterial for him as it was for the Democrats in the Russiagate investigation and as it is for them now with the impeachment process.
Whether there exists proper grounds for impeachment rides on Trump’s state of mind. The Democrats predictably found Trump devoid of any rightful intent. Thus, when confronted with gaps in their evidentiary record, they presumed the worst about Trump at every turn. Their case is infiltrated with such subjective presumptions. However, the presumption of innocence is a foundation of American law.
While an impeachment is not a traditional court case, it is a quasi-legal process. The standard for presidential impeachment is that the accused must be guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” This phrase is a legal term of art arising from English jurisprudence. It encompasses major crimes and sever misconduct that closely resembles crime. Most such things require a corrupt intent. In this case, there is no direct evidence of corrupt intent. Most of the testimony has been hearsay, compound hearsay, and witnesses drawing their own inferences. These are thin reeds upon which to impeach a duly-elected president less than one year to elections.
This is a major reason why the impeachment trial did not sway American public opinion. While the average American is not a lawyer they sense when a case is built on fact and when it is suffuse with subjective opinion. A factual case could have been developed. However, the Democrats made the hasty decision to move the case hastily. This meant leaving key evidence behind or undeveloped.
This leads to the second charge that of obstruction of justice. This borders on the ludicrous. The Democrats cite that Trump refused to give them requested documents or allow key staff to testify. Trump asserted executive privilege which is his constitutional right. If Congress does not believe the privilege attaches, they could sue Trump in court. For them to impeach a president for asserting a legal right is tantamount to Congress encroaching against the separations of powers by redefining the scope of executive privilege. This affronts both the judiciary and executive branches.
Given the visible and foreseeable deficiencies in their case, the Democrats should have censured Trump in a highly publicized House resolution. They could then
Use that and a thousand other items in a vigorous campaign against his reelection. They now are fumbling about with this impeachment contraption they devised not knowing precisely what to do with it or themselves now that they have given it life.
In the end, this impeachment is a political beauty contest with the public as judge. Thus far, the Democrats are losing their grip. When the impeachment was first announced, public opinion moved in their favor. This likely gave them false comfort, leading them to rush a rather sloppy, incomplete case. The impeachment hearings were convoluted and pedestrian. There was scant meat to much of the testimony. Public opinion shifted in Trump’s favor. By a slight majority, most Americans no longer favor impeachment. Meanwhile, Trump’s personal approval is close to its best.
Now, Pelosi compounds the damage by stating she may withhold transmission of the impeachment articles to the Senate until that Republican-controlled chamber agrees to conduct the impeachment trial in ways she deems fair. This is Pelosi at her haughty, self-righteous worst. She stands on shaky political and legal ground. The Constitution provides the Senate has the “sole” power to conduct the trial. It has no duty to confer with or do as the House leadership wishes. The Senate did not attempt to influence how the House ran the impeachment hearings. The House has no legal right to tell the Senate how to conduct its affairs. Again she seeks to encroach into the province of others. This will not sit well with the public; she will be seen as bending the rules to punish Trump for having bent the rules. Pelosi thinks she has the moral high ground to dictate thusly to the Senate. She will find that she is mistaken.
The longer she refuses to transmit the message to the Senate, the more people will see the impeachment as a political ruse, nothing more. This will make it appear that Democrats seek to sideline Trump because they fear him in a general election. It is hard to making Trump appear to be a sympathetic victim. Pelosi and her group are on their way to achieving such a feat. She thinks she is outflanking her political foes. She is not paying due attention to the public mood. The closer we get to Election Day, the more people will believe Trump’s future should be decided by their vote and not by legislative machinations. If she thinks holding this over Trump until Election Day is smart she should think again. The more she delays transmitting the articles is the more she is seen as a cynical political operative guilty of the same transgressions charged against Trump. If Pelosi is not careful, she will abet the reelection of the man as if she is an instrument of his campaign strategy. This would be the height of political negligence, it also would not do the nation a fair turn.
Best to allow this to move to the senate and let the Senate acquit Trump. This should then be used to galvanize Democrats to vote out Trump and the Republican majority in the Senate. If Pelosi and team cannot navigate such a simple move, they have done the nation and their party a grave disservice by assuming leadership positions for which they are incapable of adequately fulfilling.
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The longer she refuses to transmit the message to the Senate, the more people will see the impeachment as a political ruse, nothing more. This will make it appear that Democrats seek to sideline Trump because they fear him in a general election. It is hard to making Trump appear to be a sympathetic victim. Pelosi and her group are on their way to achieving such a feat
(The Nation)
