Impeachment: It was inevitable and necessary, even though it will fail in the Senate

In the late summer of 2016,  in a hall in Cleveland, Ohio, a major American political party nominated as its candidate for the presidency a man who had been notorious for decades for his lack of ethics, his psychological instability, his extreme impulsiveness, his self-centeredness, his lack of administrative ability, his irresponsibility, his refusal to be held accountable for anything, his crudity, and his smallness and mean-spiritedness.

In the months leading up to the convention, he had demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt his utter ignorance of virtually every subject he mentioned, combined with an inability to resist making up his own "facts" on the spur of the moment to fit whatever it would be convenient for him at the moment. His inclination to lie even when it would serve no particular purpose and his incapacity for ever admitting to being wrong were both obvious even before he ever announced his candidacy. His genius for self-promotion and his talent as a demagogue and conspiracy theorist who could push the buttons of the most ignorant, extreme, angry, and irresponsible among us became undeniable; they instinctively recognized him as one of their own.

He had babbled incoherently through the Republican debates and the campaign for the nomination. It didn't matter. He didn't need to make sense. It was only necessary that he pushed those buttons. Push them he did, and by pushing them he managed to garner first about a third and finally, once his nomination became inevitable, up to 40% of the primary and caucus vote, a large enough plurality to assure his nomination despite a field of unusually qualified but also unusually numerous Republican alternatives who had the split the votes of rational Republicans among themselves.

He was immune to rebuttal because his cause didn't depend on facts, but on their being disregarded. His candidacy was about emotion. He even bragged that if he committed murder in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue in New York he wouldn't lose any votes. His supporters seemed unaware that their hero had essentially described them as unthinking sheep and were not bothered by the statement at all. In fact, the more candid among them agreed with him.

No previous candidate with Donald Trump's record of legal and ethical skeletons in his or her closet could have survived them even without the rest of his baggage. No businessman who had driven literally every company he had ever headed into bankruptcy could have gotten away with running as a skilled administrator and businessman. No other presidential hopeful could have gotten away with the shady conduct of his or her finances with which Mr. Trump intertangled his personal and business affairs, or refused to release their income tax returns as has been routine for presidential candidates to do for decades based on patently phony claims that an ongoing audit prevented him from doing so (Richard Nixon had released his returns while under audit, and the IRS bluntly denied that anything prevented Mr. Trump from doing so).

Slowly, it became clear that the very things which set off alarm bells among most of us were what attracted people to Donald Trump. After all, they cheered when he offered to pay the legal expenses of people who beat up protesters at his rallies and "change the law" (as if he would have had the authority as president to amend the Constitution by personal fiat) to make it possible for him to sue journalists and publications that ran "deliberately false" stories about him. The more thoughtful among us wondered who would decide what was false rather than simply another perspective, and what the personal motivations of those responsible were, and worried that it might be Donald Trump or those whom he controlled; the rest knew jolly well that it was, and were delighted.

Combined with his admiration for dictators and authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-Un and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Rodrigo Duterte and even Saddam Hussein, publicly envying Kim's coerced "popularity" among his own people and the efficiency with which Duterte and Saddam dealt with problems through organized extrajudicial murder, Trump burnished his status among his admirers as a strong, forceful leader- and revealed himself to the more perceptive as an authoritarian whose appeal in the last analysis was to the authoritarian impulse in his supporters. It's hard to reconcile some of Mr. Trump's statements and deeds with the idea that he has ever even read the Constitution which he swore at his inauguration to "support and defend." And despite the praise of his supporters as a man who "loves America," it quickly became clear that he is the enemy of every ideal American stands for.

And that's what appeals to at least the core of his supporters about him.

As Charlie Sykes points out in his piece on last night's impeachment of Mr. Trump, the Founders explicitly rejected mere maladministration as grounds for impeachment, opting instead for the higher standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors." It isn't necessary, therefore, to touch on his (probably permanent) destruction of NATO and weakening of our alliances, or the geopolitical havoc he has wreaked upon America's strategic interests, or his impulsive "burning" of an Israeli intelligence operative to Russian diplomats, or his ridiculous trade wars and renegotiated trade deals which barely differ from the ones he has repudiated. Most Americans understand that despite the continued growth of a growing economy he inherited from the previous administration, he's done a bad job of running the country. That's one reason why there has never been a time since the day he announced his candidacy- including the day he was elected- on which he's been able to claim the support of a majority of the American people.

The issue is high crimes and misdemeanors. No, this is not a matter of Democrats disagreeing with him about policy. No, it's not a matter of hearsay. It's a matter of the transcript which Mr. Trump himself released of his "beautiful," "perfect" conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he attempted to solicit the re-opening of the investigation by Ukrainian authorities of debunked criminal charges against the son of his likely opponent in next year's election, just as he has openly solicited the same thing from China and other foreign governments. That, in itself, is something a wiser (or more accountable) president would have avoided like the plague, especially in the wake of a previous election in which a foreign government (Mr. Trump's friends the Russians, even though he continues to repeat the debunked theory that it was the very Ukraine from whom he now openly solicits interference in our election, as much on his behalf as the Russian interference was in 2016). But he did it in such a way that the conversation itself- as the White House transcript of the phone call itself records it- seems to imply that military aid to Ukraine which had been withheld from Ukraine would be forthcoming if President Zelensky would help Mr. Trump out politically by publicly announcing that it was reopening the investigation of Hunter Biden. 

I won't even get into his siding with the interests of Russia over and against those of the United States, or of accepting the word of Vladimir Putin and the FSB above that of the FBI and CIA.

The House Judiciary Committee chose not to reopen the Mueller Report, which pointedly refused to exonerate Mr. Trump (his lies to the contrary) regarding the contacts between members of his campaign staff and the Russian government which have sent several of them to prison, which Mr. Trump claims to have been unaware of, and which of which his supporters seem even now to be unaware.  Mr. Trump's large holdings in Russia (as well as North Korea, Iran, and other unfriendly nations, which chose to retain upon becoming president and put into a farcical "blind trust" administered by his own children instead of divesting himself of them) don't figure in the articles of impeachment, nor does his benefiting financially from his office in violation of the Emoluments Clause to the Constitution by using his properties for government meetings and benefitting financially by foreign leaders eager to curry favor with him staying at his hotels and utilizing other facilities owned by him. That matter is being litigated separately in the Federal courts.

It doesn't even mention Mr. Trump's obstruction of justice through his refusal to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. But it does call the president to account for repeating that particular crime by forbidding members of his administration to cooperate with another lawful investigation, namely that of the House of Representatives of potential articles of impeachment.

That he is guilty of that, that it rises to the level of being an impeachable offense, and that it will be swept under the rug by the Republican majority in the Senate are all undeniable by anyone making a credible pretense of simple candor.

Some Democrats indeed began talking about impeaching Mr. Trump on the day he was inaugurated. That was stupid and obviously unfair as well. But the whine that the Democrats have therefore been "out to get" our poor, persecuted, snowflake president from the beginning is ridiculous. It evaporates in the face of everything that was known even then about Donald Trump's history, personality, and character that this moment would come. It was inevitable.

He is a man who does not believe that the rules apply to him, and who holds the law (including the Constitution) in contempt. He is a man psychologically incapable of conducting his office in an honorable manner, and his entire adult life permitted no other conclusion even then. It was stupid and counterproductive to say it. But his entire personality and his entire pattern of behavior up until the moment he took the oath screamed that it was only a matter of time until he was impeached, and frankly, I'm both surprised and relieved that his conduct of the presidency and the mess he's made of our national affairs hasn't been worse.

I expected it to be far worse. I guess that's cause for congratulating the man.

I guess.

I commend Charlie Sykes's column on last night's impeachment vote to you. As usual, it's both succinct and right on the mark. But even though the president and his supporters may disingenuously pretend otherwise, it's ridiculous to think that this moment wasn't made inevitable the moment Donald Trump was elected president.

And he had to be held to account. History could not have been able to record that Donald Trump had gotten away with his lawless, arrogant high handedness. This administration could not be allowed to set a precedent. But from the very beginning, Donald John Trump was bound to commit impeachable offense after impeachable offense because he doesn't believe that the rules apply to him. Not only would no previous president have been able to get away with what this guy has pulled, but no previous president would even have tried.

None must ever dare to try again.

A partisan Senate, some of whose members have already pledged in advance to violate their oaths to do impartial justice in light of the evidence submitted to them, will inevitably acquit him. No matter. The point had to be made that the President of the United States is, in fact, accountable, is not above the law, and cannot simply get away with the kind of lawless nonsense this authoritarian president has made his brand. And both the president and his jurors alike will shortly have to answer to a different court, whose verdict will be quite different. Mr. Trump and many of his jurors will stand before that court in November of next year.