Impeachment may well be warranted, but it's a bad idea- and it isn't going to happen
Point taken. Democrats have always tended to be an unruly, ornery bunch, independent-minded and not amenable to regimentation or discipline. This traditionally has contrasted with what at least has been perceived as a buttoned-down, somewhat stuffy sobriety among Republicans. Someone once said that Republicans always draw their drapes, but never do anything that would require privacy, whereas Democrats never draw their drapes- and... well, really should.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is the latest national leader to face the unenviable task of trying to keep Democrats in line. The metaphor of herding cats comes to mind. Pope Nancy- who regards herself as an authority on the Catholic position on abortion superior to the magisterium, tradition, Scripture, and the Catechism- has been struggling mightily to resist what appears to be a burgeoning movement on the party's ever-growing left wing to impeach President Trump.
It's almost as if it were 1998 again, only in reverse. Back then, a Republican House impeached Bill Clinton- not, like the disingenuous mantra of Democrats to this day would have it, for receiving oral sex from Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office, but for lying about it while under oath. There was never any real possibility of his being convicted. But a partisan fever was running hot, a legitimate concern existed about a president who had lied under oath (even though it was not, technically, perjury), and by hook or by crook the ideologically rabid House majority was determined to "get" the man.
Predictably, Clinton was acquitted by a Senate so closely divided between the parties that any notion that the two-thirds majority needed to convict was in any way attainable was absurd. All the impeachment of the second American president in history accomplished was to divide an already bitterly-divided America still further.
In a sense, though, the Republicans got away with it, though in another sense that's debatable. That Fall's election did not appreciably change the party makeup of either the Senate or the House. But the perception that the impeachment process had been abused for partisan purposes did have an impact. Ordinarily, in an off-year election, the sitting president's party loses about 25 seats in the House. But in 1998, for only the second time since the Civil War, it gained them. True, the gain of five seats by the Democrats was of little practical consequence, but on balance it represented a swing of 30! it seems hard to imagine that having happened if it had not been for the ill-advised decision by Republicans whose partisanship got the better of their judgment to try to impeach a president of the other party when the votes just weren't there in the Senate to convict. The whole thing came across to the voters as an abuse of the process, an exercise in petty partisanship.
Today, the rabidly partisan Democratic left is straining at the bit to impeach President Donald Trump. Long-time readers of this blog may recall that when Mr. Trump was elected I saw his impeachment as inevitable. His emotional instability, his personal immaturity, his lack of filters, his demonstrated ignorance of the Constitution and the basics of government, macroeconomics, history, and world geopolitics, his tendency to make up "alternative facts" (and sometimes fictitious events) to fulfill the rhetorical needs of the moment, his tendency to reverse or contradict himself while refusing to acknowledge having done so, his lack of administrative capability as demonstrated by the regularity with which the businesses which he ran went bankrupt, his long-standing pattern of cutting ethical corners and playing fast and loose with the law, his apparent lack of dedication to any political philosophy or principle other than his own glorification, his manifest and obnoxious self-centeredness, his apparent inability to back down from claims and statements even when he was conclusively shown to be wrong, his fondness for bullying those not in a position to fight back... well, the list of reasons goes on and on, but I expected his presidency to be such a disaster that there would be no way he could ever finish his first term.
In many ways, I was right. While his supporters seem blissfully unaware of it, despite a booming economy there has never been a point since the night he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton that a majority of the American people have, according to the polls (Fox News and Rasmussen, each of which has a Republican bias in its sampling, being occasional exceptions), approved of the job he has done as president.
At the same time, I underestimated the resiliency of the system. Although their numbers have grown worryingly smaller as time has gone on, there have always been enough "grown-ups" in Mr. Trump's administration to keep him from destroying himself and the country. The testimony of the White House staff to the Mueller investigation revealed that senior members of his administration frequently and consciously deceive him, disobey or ignore his orders, and generally seek at all costs to contain a loose-canon president in order to stop him from destroying himself. And having surrounded himself with able, experienced, and substantial men like James Mattis, John Kelly, and H.R. McMaster, as well as capable people from outside government, like Rex Tillerson, a buffer has existed between Mr. Trump and the most extreme misuses of the powers of his office.
Mr. Trump's habit of lying about things which put him in a bad light or get in the way of whatever he's trying to accomplish at the moment- with a frequency and apparent ease unprecedented in modern history- is something I would have imagined that more people would notice. But I underestimated the degree to which people can be blinded by partisanship. His aggressively adversarial relationship with the media- and yes, they do have a strong, though largely unconscious and unintentional, liberal bias- has served to discredit any source of information other than himself in the eyes of his base and safeguard him from accountability. His decision to treat literally any critic as an enemy and to regard literally any criticism as a personal attack, responding with undignified, over-the-top ridicule and derision often out of all proportion to what, if the truth be told, really isn't something most people would consider a provocation has further served to insulate him from accountability, at least in the eyes of his supporters, in whose eyes he can do no wrong and his critics are by definition villains.
Mr. Trump's decision to fire former FBI Director James Comey apparently because Comey refused his requests to pledge his personal loyalty to him and to stop the investigation of his Chief of Staff is one of many things he has done which raise serious questions about whether the president is guilty of obstruction of justice. He thereafter treated Comey as an enemy allegedly motivated by partisanship and reportedly attempted to have him prosecuted. He asked Comey's temporary successor, Acting Director Andrew McCabe, for whom he had voted for in the 2016 election.
McCabe became the target of Twitter attacks by Mr. Trump and other forms of pressure on Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions- later himself to be fired for exhibiting an apparently higher loyalty to what he perceived to be his duty than to Mr. Trump-and new FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire him. A memo by Rep. Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House committee overseeing the investigation into possible involvement in Russian interference in the 2016 election, alleged that the FBI had relied on "politically motivated or questionable sources" in obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in October 2016 against Trump aide Carter Page. He cited McCabe's testimony before the committee in executive session. Democratic members of the committee vigorously disputed the accuracy of the Nunes memo, and when the Trump Department of Justice released heavily redacted copies of the applications for the FISA warrants in the Page matter the Democratic version of events was vindicated and key allegations made by the Nunes memo were shown to be false or misleading.
Nunes stepped aside as head of the committee in April 2017 when the House Ethics Committee began an investigation into his coordination of his activities with the White House but subsequently denied having recused himself when the investigation ended in December.
Apparently he's a Trump imitator as well as being a Trump partisan.
Mr. Trump believes that the American intelligence community was hostile to him from the beginning for reasons of partisanship. He believes that his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton, should have been prosecuted for her negligence in using a private email server to conduct classified State Department business despite the FBI's conclusion that it did not rise to the level of criminality. The Israeli website Ynetnews reported that in early January 2017, following allegations by former MI6 Russia Desk head Christopher Steele of undue Russian influence over Mr. Trump, the CIA had warned Mossad and other allied intelligence agencies to be "careful" of sharing sensitive information with the Trump White House until the allegations had been fully investigated. That warning was vindicated on May 10, 2017, when Mr. Trump, in an effort to impress the Russian ambassador to the United States and the Russian foreign minister with the breadth of his knowledge, revealed information which inadvertently compromised an Israeli intelligence asset. Two Israeli intelligence officers privately acknowledged that the incident confirmed their "worst fears," and called the future of intelligence sharing between the two nations into question; Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman subsequently confirmed that Israel subsequently did a "spot repair" in its "unprecedented cooperation" with American intelligence agencies.
Mr. Trump's supporters dismiss the Steele Report, and rightly so; it has subsequently been revealed that it was compiled by Steele while under contract to the Clinton campaign. Nevertheless, at the time it would be hard to argue that the FBI wasn't obligated to investigate its allegations or that our allies would not have had good reason to wait until that investigation was concluded. Moreover, a compelling case can be made that Mr. Trump's notorious lack of personal filters itself comprises an area of reasonable concern by our intelligence agencies.
And his own behavior hasn't helped. His categorical rejection of the idea that Russia was the agent in the 2016 hacking of the DNC computers in the face of a contrary conclusion reached by both the FBI and the CIA lacked credibility even at the time, given the fact that the software used had previously been encountered only in Russian interference with Ukranian targeting computers during the Crimean invasion and the fact that there was a strong suspicion even of the identities of the FSB agents involved. His supporters, characteristically, accepted his version events at face value anyway. At this point, of course, trials have been held, Russian agents sent to jail, and even Mr. Trump is willing at times to admit that it was the Russians after all.
Why? His large investments in Russia are an explanation so obvious that it seems incredible that anyone could fail to see them as eyebrow-raising, especially since rather than divesting himself of them he put them into a "blind trust" administered by his own children.
He might as well not have bothered.
But he nevertheless treats any suspicion of his ties to Russia as evidence of a partisan conspiracy against him. That includes the Mueller investigation, which he routinely denounced as a "witch hunt" and seemed to want to obstruct at every turn.
Why? His defensiveness itself raises disturbing questions. An innocent man would want to seek the vindication Mr. Trump falsely claims that the Mueller Report in fact ultimately provided; instead, Mr. Trump personally vilified Mueller and sought at every turn to discredit and derail his investigation. Mueller's press conference yesterday suggests that constitutional questions regarding whether a sitting president can be indicted played a major role in the fact that this one wasn't, and suggested that impeachment by the House was the proper recourse if the House saw fit. And contrary to the insistence of Mr. Trump and his partisans, there was more than enough evidence of Mr. Trump's attempts to derail the Mueller investigation to raise legitimate questions regarding obstruction of justice. In any case, the Constitution does not require actual criminality as grounds for impeachment; "high crimes and misdemeanors" by precedent covers a broad range of misbehavior whether or not it actually involves a violation of the law.
Which, as Mueller reiterated yesterday, Mr. Trump's behavior very well may have.
McCabe, despite having taken a terminal leave of absence anticipating retirement was fired only two days before being eligible for full retirement benefits as a result of a finding by the FBI Inspector General that he had approved an "improper media disclosure" regarding the disagreements between the FBI and the Department of Justice concerning the Clinton investigation. Atty. Gen, Sessions, who himself was later forced out of office for refusing to compromise himself ethically by helping to interfere with the Mueller investigation, also cited several unspecified instances of a "lack of candor" on McCabe's part, some of them while under oath. The Inspector General later claimed that McCabe had lied to investigators four times, three of them under oath. McCabe categorically denies any dishonesty and argues that the charges were politically motivated and merely an attempt to discredit him.
Mr. Trump, characteristically, took to Twitter to gloat over McCabe's dismissal forty-eight hours short of full retirement. "Andrew McCabe FIRED," the president chortled, "a great day for the hard working (sic) men and women of the FBI - (sic) A great day for Democracy (sic)."
In any case, McCabe told 60 Minutes in February 2019 that concerns that Mr. Trump had obstructed justice and was working on behalf of Russian interests and against those of the United States resulted in discussions at "the highest levels of American law enforcement" on an appropriate course of action took place in the aftermath of the Comey firing. These included the Vice-President and Cabinet suspending Trump from office under the 25th Amendment and subsequent impeachment proceedings in Congress. Then Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who has since categorically denied it, had been previously reported to have raised the possibility with his colleagues.
There seems to be a clear- and frankly rather suspicious- pattern on Mr. Trump's part of misusing the authority of his office to interfere with reasonable investigations of his behavior, a refusal to be accountable all too much in keeping with his character. No matter how much smoke the president and his supporters may blow, there are clearly grounds for impeachment.
But it would be a huge mistake. We are a little more than a year from an election which Mr. Trump- who trails in all the battleground states which unexpectedly provided him with his margin of victory in the Electoral College last time in large measure due to the number of farmers and auto workers who have been put out of business or out of work by his trade war with China- seems likely to be defeated. No matter how it happens, he and his supporters will inevitably claim that his removal from office was illegitimate. If he loses, the election will have been stolen. No evidence or logic, of course, is required for them to make wild charges of this kind, or ever has been.
But if he is impeached by the House and removed by the Senate, he and his supporters will treat it as a coup d'etat. No matter how richly he might be proven to deserve removal from office, and how clearly it might be proven that he deserves it, he and his supporters live in a perpetual state of denial in which he is never at fault for anything and every criticism of him or even disagreement with him is sinister and illicit. The result is that an already bitterly-divided nation will be divided as it hasn't been divided since the Civil War, and our political process undermined to a degree out of all proportion to whatever benefit it might bring to remove him from office early.
Except that there is no way in creation that the Republican Senate will convict him even in the face of a clear showing that he deserves it
But beyond that, Nancy Pelosi's problem with the far left of her caucus isn't nearly as serious as it sometimes seems. Yes, the Democratic party is a bird with two left wings, and yes, the one further left is not only in the process of becoming overwhelmingly dominant but seems to be increasingly successful in attracting support among House Democrats for impeachment.
And yet from all indications at this point, there are no more than 40 votes to begin the impeachment process at this time in the House Democratic Caucus, which has 235 members.
Now, to keep this in perspective, that does not mean that if the process were begun, the full House wouldn't ultimately vote to impeach Mr. Trump. Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com estimates that somewhere close to 150 members of the Caucus would probably vote for impeachment if it came to that. 30 to 50 conservative Democrats or Democrats from districts the president carried in 2016 would probably vote against it. 218 votes would be needed to impeach, and there are 198 Republicans. Perhaps one or two of them might vote for impeachment, but I wouldn't count on it.
Given the rabid pro-impeachment sentiment of the Democratic base, if the matter came to a vote the pressure on the 85 or so Democrats who might not be gung-ho for impeachment would be intense. Only 68 more votes would be necessary to impeach. Silver believes that there probably would be a majority of House members who would end up voting for impeachment right now.
Bear in mind that Mr. Trump would inevitably be acquitted by the Republican Senate and play his impeachment the same way he played the Mueller investigation: as an attempt at a partisan coup. Not that it needs any further encouragement, but Mr. Trump's base would be invigorated as never before. In 1998, the impeachment of Bill Clinton turned the normal 25 House seat loss by the president's party into a five-seat gain. While Mr. Trump's unpopularity puts him into a deeper hole than President Clinton was in, incumbent presidents running for re-election are usually helped by their incumbency. Donald Trump's impeachment by a Democratic House and subsequent acquittal by the Republican Senate might well be one of the two things which could end up getting him re-elected.
The other, of course, would be for the Democratic primaries to turn into an orgy of ideological self-indulgence and pretty much any of the candidates other than Biden or Hickenlooper or Bullock ending up as the nominee, scaring independent centrists nearly as much as Mr. Trump scares them.
But for the first scenario to happen, the process would have to be initiated, and it's hard to see how that could happen without Nancy Pelosi's say so. While my differences with Speaker Pelosi are profound, there is no question about her being a savvy politician, and I just don't see that happening short of an uprising in the Democratic Caucus that simply doesn't seem at this point to be in the works.
Perhaps because she knows full well how hard it is to herd cats, she isn't likely to even let them out of the pen.
So barring utterly unforeseen circumstances like the President biting the head off a chicken on national TV, at this point I'm fairly certain that I'm going to be proven wrong. Donald Trump will finish his first term after all. And right now, as long as Speaker Pelosi is able to keep the gate on the cat-pen firmly locked and not too many of the cats climb over the fence, I'm fairly confident that his first term will be his only one.
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