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On Impeachment
Impeachment is a political process, as the framers of the Constitution intended it to be. They defined the process but left vague the specific conditions under which it would be appropriate, delegating that to the Congresses of the future to determine on a case-by-case basis. They must have known that its application would be colored by partisanship: they lived in politically tumultuous times, times filled with drama and political opposition, and were under no illusions about the nature of political animals or the need to keep even the best of them in check.
Congress is welcome to impeach President Trump. I think they will be unsuccessful in removing him from office; I am undecided as to whether I think the effort will redound to their benefit or their detriment — though I suspect the latter.
Because impeachment is a political process, we are right, in my opinion, to base our support or opposition to impeachment on political principles. If there were an open-and-shut case of “high crimes and misdemeanors” committed by a President, my fidelity to the Constitution would compel me to call for impeachment and, most likely, removal. But anything short of that rather ambiguous standard leaves us free to decide whether or not we think it politically expedient to remove a duly elected President from office and, in so doing, contravene and nullify the will of the electorate.
I was opposed to impeaching President Obama, even though I thought he was terribly destructive and the nation would be far better off without him. It seemed an unwise political calculus — and, not coincidentally, one destined to fail. Better to endure the wreckage of his two terms in office and try to pick up the pieces later. Even mere impeachment, much less removal from office, would have deified an already canonized mediocrity, and that just didn’t make sense to me.
President Trump is, in my opinion, a vastly superior President to President Obama. Oh, sure, he’s graceless and clumsy, and has a host of peccadilloes that sometimes frustrate me. But I think his administration is broadly and deeply good for the country. (While the hatred his opponents express is not good for the country, it hardly seem fair to blame Trump for that: they hated Bush as well, and Romney, and McCain, and Reagan, and….)
I’ve yet to see a compelling case for Trump’s removal from office. I wish he’d rein in social spending, but that isn’t going to happen; beyond that, I’m generally happy with his performance. The Russian collusion thing was bogus; the Ukraine thing is, at best, circumstantial and ambiguous. Most of the other anti-Trump arguments are, I think, built on the fabrications of a vicious and mendacious media and opinion-shaping elite.
So let’s have an impeachment, and then let’s have four more years of Trump, a lot more deregulation, more excellent federal judges, and maybe, just maybe, a tiny bit of fiscal sanity.
And perhaps, at the rate the left is moving, four years from now they’ll be so far removed from anything the rest of America considers healthy and sane that we won’t have to worry about them assuming power any time soon.
Published in Politics
Clear, concise, and full of common sense. Good job as usual, Henry.
I saw several things today that will blow up on Dems. They say it is election interference and Giuliani, but Biden hadn’t announced when this took place. I haven’t verified the dates.
There appears to be a public copy of a sworn statement by the prosecutor Biden had fired.
The whole thing about storing it on a “secret” server is BS. One wonders if anyone who said that even has a security clearance.
re the debate over whether hearsay can be used as whistleblower evidence, seems it couldn’t be but the form was changed to allow it a few days before the whistleblower complaint came out.
How many lies before people won’t buy any of it.
I don’t have enough personal scholarship on this point to contradict this, but while there were factions in the Constitutional Congress did they really anticipate the political parties that arose a decade after the Constitution was adopted? It seems that to formulate the impeachment process in this way is to convert our system to a Parliamentary form: Each executive serves at the pleasure of the Congress notwithstanding a plebiscite. It makes no difference that when a president is impeached, the vice president of the same party assumes the role. The system soon devolves to establishment control for which no outsiders can have a chance.
Listened to a clip from Trey Gowdy….he said if there is a smoking gun, he couldn’t even find the gun. Said to appease the base, they will vote to impeach and punt it to the Senate.
Around 80 Dems had their mind made up from the beginning anyway. Frivolous impeachment’s should not be tolerated and must go punished next November. It is wrong to compare it to Clinton, in my opinion. He actually committed a crime, one the Dems through their #metoo movement have been willing to destroy people over without due process, one they excused Clinton for doing. This has always been an impeachment in search of a crime. Even if the Senate refuses to take it up or do have the trial but don’t remove, An innocent man will be tainted forever for they can refer to him as an impeached president.
I. have had it with the NTs bringing the rope to the lynching.
If the Dems do impeach Trump, but the Republicans retake the House in 2020, I’d like to see a motion filed and passed which removes the impeachment from the record. In other words, “unimpeach” Trump.
And don’t say it can’t be done. If Congress can give themselves a sexual harassment slush fund, they can do anything . . .
There is a theory that impeachment is not about removing Trump, but in de-legitimatizing the Constitution, elections, and GOP members in all branches of government.
And de-legitimizing the Electoral College, voters who don’t vote Democrat, a majority SCOTUS they don’t like, etc.
I think the Chief Justice presides in order to do judgy things, so the house process is purely political, but the senate one is not necessarily so, and there is nothing but a gentleman’s agreement as to the role of the CJoSCOTUS. So…
I believe a nakedly political impeachment could be dismissed by CJ.
The balance of powers thing always requires the other 2 to gang up on the third, so the judicial role is not window dressing.
but whatever, its not like the constitution actually matters its all a pantomime of sophistry at this point anyway.
You can fool some of the people all of the time – and that’s enough (to mangle a quote).
This may actually come to nothing. Put aside the kabuki, will there be an actual vote to establish an impeachment committee, or to empower the judiciary committee, which is the recent method (Nixon and Clinton).
Remember how conservatives often railed against the Republican majority being undermined by weak sister Republican Congressmen? Pelosi’s majority is dependent on 40 some Congressmen elected in districts won by Trump in 2016. Sure, most could fashion a defense of a vote to establish an impeachment committee. After all, an investigation could find no reason to vote a bill of impeachment. But a vote to impeach, in the absence of clear and convincing evidence of a crime, much harder to defend.
How many Congressmen from Trump friendly districts would be willing to risk their seats? This is US, not British, politics. Boris Johnson can literally separate faithless MPs from his party. In the US, anyone can run for Congress as a Democrat. What’s the end game for those candidates? “I voted to impeach a President who is popular in my district and all I got was a lousy T shirt and a one way ticket to Palookaville.”
I’m not counting my chickens before they hatch. But I would like to see if there are any actual eggs. There’s a lot more inside baseball to be played. It’s quite possible the Democrats are trading their majority for a handful of magic beans.
*** Apache Web Service – segment fault ***
Reason:
Err-80192: Too many metaphors
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Democrats and their longed-for impeachment. They just want a big show running during an election year. I hope Trump can nip it fast but even if innocent of anything huge, all they need to feed the press is something confusing and bad-looking to typical voter brains.
On a slightly tangential side note, back in the spring — when it was clear the Mueller Report was going to produce bupkis about Trump’s collusion with Putin in fixing the 2016 election — Alec Baldwin was telling the world he was over, through, done portraying Donald Trump on ‘Saturday Night Live’ . But in the wake of this week’s impeachment kerfuffle, guess who was back on SNL’s season premiere last night doing his (not very good) impersonation again?
Alec is certainly free to change his mind, but the more interesting thing is why he changed his mind and how his attitude reflects the base of hard-core progressive Democratic voters. The list of Baldwin’s anger-management issues could fill a server farm worth of computers, but he and the other angry types of the left were really having a horrible case of the sads back in the spring when their dreams of impeachment were going away. He didn’t want to do the Trump schtick if there wasn’t a Trump impeachment end game just down the road. The Dems’ actions over the past 10 days have re-energized the Alec Baldwins of the world, even as polls show swing voters have not bought in and are against an impeachment effort.
So for a short-term gain of energizing their angry base, the Democrats may have created a situation where their base loves clapplause things like more Trump/Putin/impeachment skits on SNL, but end up alienating the swing voters who any of their candidates will need next November (while at the same time lowering the odds that the candidate most likely to woo the Obama/Trump swing voters from 2008/2012/2016 — wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe — won’t be the nominee, because they can’t shriek about Trump’s actions in Ukraine while giving Hunter Biden and his dad a pass on trying to influence a foreign country).
Humor! AR, ar.