Friday, December 13, 2019

Articles of Impeachment

After weeks of blathering about "quid pro quo" and "bribery" and "high crimes and misdemeanors" that imperil our national security the Democrats have settled on two very tepid articles of impeachment.

Mr. Trump has been indicted for abusing his power as president and for obstructing a congressional investigation by refusing to cooperate with it.

As Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, explains in an excellent piece at NRO, neither of these articles has much merit and neither of them warrants an impeachment.

The obstruction of congress allegation is risible since it arises from the president's exercise of his constitutionally permitted right to invoke executive privilege and attorney-client privilege to keep his subordinates from testifying before Congress. If Congress feels an urgent need to obtain that testimony they are free to take the matter to the courts for adjudication, but this they chose not to do.

The abuse of power allegation is more serious but still woefully weak. Here's McCarthy:
Trump’s abuse of power is said to have three components: The president (a) exploited his foreign-relations power to pressure a foreign nation [Ukraine] to meddle in American domestic politics; (b) undermined our democratic elections; and (c) endangered national security. Each is problematic.
McCarthy argues that there were legitimate grounds for Trump to encourage the Ukrainians to undertake the investigations he requested, and not only were the Ukrainians unaware that there was any "pressure" being applied to them nothing whatsoever came of it.

Moreover, the claim that Trump endangered national security is frivolous. McCarthy observes that the Democrats are trying to persuade the American people that,
Our noble (if pervasively corrupt) ally Ukraine is in a border war with Russia, a hostile foreign power, so we supply defense aid to Kyiv so they can fight Moscow’s mercenaries over there, lest we have to fight the Russian army over here. Yes, Jerry Nadler would have us believe that Ukraine — its armed forces threaded with neo-Nazis and jihadists — is the only thing preventing Putin from laying waste to everything from the Upper West Side down to Greenwich Village.

This, from the same Democrats who yawned when Russia annexed Crimea, and when Obama denied Kyiv the lethal defense aid Trump has provided.

This, from the same Democrats who swooned when Obama mocked Mitt Romney for observing that Russia remains our most worrisome geopolitical foe. This, from the same Democrats who cheered when Obama struck a deal, including cash ransom payments, to give Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism, an industrial-strength nuclear program that, in the absence of meaningful monitoring, could be converted to a nuclear-arms program in nothing flat.

It is perfectly reasonable to contend that arming Ukraine against Russian aggression is in American interests — especially after prior U.S. administrations of both parties encouraged Ukraine to disarm on the loopy theory that post-Soviet Russia posed no threat. But the claim that Trump’s dealings with Ukraine have put our national security at risk is fatuous.
McCarthy lays out his case in much more detail at the link. If you read his article it will become clear to you why so many Americans, and even some congressional Democrats, oppose this whole charade. It seems to many that the only reason for the Democrats to be putting the nation through this ugly ordeal is to weaken Trump for the 2020 election. Polls suggest, however, that it might well have the opposite effect.

One effect it will almost surely have that should deeply concern every American is that by lowering the threshold for impeachment to almost a whim, the Democrats are setting a very dangerous precedent. If a president can be impeached and removed from office simply for partisan political reasons or because the opposing party just don't like him then in the future any occupant of the White House is in real danger of removal from office merely because the opposite party controls the House and the Senate.

This would be very destabilizing to our polity, and the people who are responsible for setting this precedent are acting with enormous recklessness and short-sightedness. Hopefully, they'll be told that unequivocally at the polls next November.