Impeachment advice worth listening to

Impeachment advice worth listening to

by digby

Over the past couple of years I’ve read a bunch of books and watched a bunch of documentaries about Watergate. I was a teenager at the time and I avidly watched it unfold. But it was a long time ago and I hadn’t realized how little I really knew of the details until I took an in-depth look back at it.

Elizabeth Drew wrote what is in my opinion the best real time book on the subject:

If you haven’t read it or want to refresh your memory, I highly recommend you read it. She has, of course, had an illustrious career beyond that and she’s extremely insightful about Washington politics generally. Democrats should read her op-ed in the New York Times today:

House Democratic leaders, following frustrated efforts to hold President Trump to account, understandably want to strike quickly to impeach him on the grounds of one extremely serious issue: his pressuring the president of Ukraine to get the goods on his Democratic rival Joe Biden. But they’re risking making their target too narrow and moving too fast.

In so doing they could end up implicitly bestowing approval on other presidential acts that amount to a long train of abuses of power. And going too quickly could shut off the oxygen that might fuel Republican acceptance that it’s time to break with Mr. Trump — perhaps enough of them to end his presidency.

To limit the impeachment process to the most blatant presidential misdeed yet discovered would leave in the dust — unresolved for history, setting dangerous precedents — the possibility of holding accountable a president who routinely enriches himself at the expense of the taxpayers and flouts the Constitution’s emoluments clause, lies so persistently that we’re far from the democratic concept of transparent government, usurps the role of Congress by unilaterally holding up funds or using them for other purposes than it has approved, bullies private businesses by threatening a tax increase or a significant raise in postal rates (as Mr. Trump did to Amazon, whose owner also owns The Washington Post), tells intelligence alumni who openly criticize him that he’ll suspend their security clearances and fights the law that allows Congress to obtain his tax returns.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a master strategist, has said that these issues can be taken up later. With respect, if a president were to be impeached more than once, what is the meaning of impeachment? Will Republican senators be willing to vote to eject Mr. Trump from the presidency, which is what the Senate trial is about, on the basis of one issue, no matter how repellent?

Sign Up for Debatable

Agree to disagree, or disagree better? We’ll help you understand the sharpest arguments on the most pressing issues of the week, from new and familiar voices.

I suggest taking other issues into account, without going into detail, in a second article of impeachment that would accompany the one centering on Ukraine. This might resemble the second of the three articles against Richard Nixon drawn up in 1974 by the House Judiciary Committee. Article II held Nixon accountable for a collection of abuses of power and also, significantly, for the acts of his subordinates in pursuit of his untoward goals. A third article could cover Mr. Trump’s serial obstructions of legitimate attempts to investigate his administration’s alleged misdeeds.

Some other questions won’t be resolved for a while. For example, one very large subject that is the poison ivy that pervades Mr. Trump’s presidency: the role of Russia. It was also in Russia’s interest that Mr. Trump hold up military assistance to Ukraine for its war against Mr. Trump’s friend President Vladimir Putin. Another is the extent to which Mr. Trump’s foreign policy has been guided by favoritism toward the leaders of other countries (several of them autocrats) where his private company has been able to do business, putting up hotels and such.

Speaker Pelosi and her allies argue that a narrow, Ukraine-based impeachment agenda is more likely to attract wider public support than a collection of grievances because it “is easier for the public to understand.” They’re spooked by the failure of the report by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, to galvanize public opinion, but there are several reasons for that, including that Mr. Mueller, bogged down in legalisms, didn’t try.

In fact, a speedily adopted Ukraine-based impeachment might repel possible Republican supporters. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, urges that the drafters of even just a Ukraine article take their time. “Speed is less important than professional thoroughness,” he says. “A well-prepared case could assure all Democratic votes and get Republican votes in the Senate. The atmosphere there now is too partisan for that.”

The almost universally held assumption that Senate Republicans will never vote to convict Mr. Trump is subject to question. It’s based on the same kind of thinking that has accompanied the question of holding Mr. Trump to account all along: projecting from stasis — that is, assuming that how the public and the politicians respond to an issue at the moment is how they always will.

For months this year we were told that “the public isn’t interested.” This assumption doesn’t allow for new developments or for individuals to see things in a different light. Within three days in the past tumultuous week, public opinion as measured in a Morning Consult poll swung a head-snapping 13 points in favor of an impeachment process.

Some Republicans whose principal election fear used to be of being “primaried” are beginning to worry more about running with Mr. Trump. They’d prefer not to be associated with parts of his agenda or his increasingly erratic behavior. Though the 2018 midterms wiped out numerous leaning-to-center Republicans, there are signs of Republican discontent with Mr. Trump’s conduct with Ukraine.

Yet the usual small group of House Republicans is being obstreperous, and in the Senate, Lindsey Graham, who’s also the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has gone the furthest of Republicans in attacking the impeachment inquiry.

He has heatedly called the investigation “a sham” and “a political set-up,” charging that the whistle-blower’s version of the conversation that’s at the heart of the matter didn’t match the notes of the conversation released by the White House (the differences could only be technical). He has insisted that Mr. Trump’s pressing for “a favor” from Ukraine’s neophyte president wasn’t a quid pro quo, which it obviously was because it followed directly the Ukraine president’s request for the military aid that Congress had approved.

But most Republicans remain silent. Many of them know that Mr. Trump’s behavior toward Ukraine is indefensible. And they’re aware that damning new disclosures can burst upon them anytime. A Senate Democrat with friends across the aisle (it happens) described his Republican colleagues as “nervous as hell.”

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, the one-man roadblock, behaved most unusually, for him, last week. First, he allowed Senate adoption of a unanimous consent request sponsored by the Democrats that the text of the whistle-blower’s complaint be released to Congress, as required by law. (The administration had cooked up excuses to not release it.) Mr. McConnell also said that if the House voted to impeach the president, the Senate would have “no choice” but to hold a trial.

If two-thirds of the senators, which would require 20 Republicans, voted to convict, Mr. Trump would have to surrender the presidency. When Nixon saw this coming, he resigned. If the articles of impeachment are carefully and thoughtfully drawn, if they indicate the comprehensiveness of Mr. Trump’s disregard for the Constitution, it would be unwise to rule out anything.

But even if the president isn’t convicted, Republican votes to impeach can still count for a lot. If the managers of the impeachment drive proceed in a manner that attracts even some Republican votes — say, eight or 10, especially in the Senate — this could at least impinge on Mr. Trump’s inevitable claims that the whole thing has been a “partisan witch hunt.”