The Real Impeachment Scandal Isn't About Trump
The Real Impeachment Scandal Isn't About Trump
Patrick Semansky / AP
There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill.
Or so they think.
From the time of Donald Trumps election, American elites have hungered for
this moment. At long last, they have the 45th president of the United States
cornered. In typically ham-handed fashion, Trump has given his adversaries
the very means to destroy him politically. They will not waste the
opportunity. Impeachment nowfinally, some will sayqualifies as a virtual
certainty.
No doubt many surprises lie ahead. Yet the Democrats controlling the House
of Representatives have passed the point of no return. The time for
prudential judgmentsthe Republican-controlled Senate will never convict, so
why bother?is gone for good. To back down now would expose the presidents
pursuers as spineless cowards. The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN,
and MSNBC would not soon forgive such craven behavior.
So, as President Woodrow Wilson, speaking in 1919 put it, The stage is set,
the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but
by the hand of God. Of course, the issue back then was a notably weighty
one: whether to ratify the Versailles Treaty. That it now concerns a
Mafia-like shakedown orchestrated by one of Wilsons successors tells us
something about the trajectory of American politics over the course of the
last century and it has not been a story of ascent.
The effort to boot the president from office is certain to yield a memorable
spectacle. The rancor and contempt that have clogged American politics like
a backed-up sewer since the day of Donald Trumps election will now find
release. Watergate will pale by comparison. The uproar triggered by Bill
Clintons sexual relations will be nothing by comparison. A de facto
collaboration between Trump, those who despise him, and those who despise
his critics all but guarantees that this story will dominate the news,
undoubtedly for months to come.
As this process unspools, what politicians like to call the peoples
business will go essentially unattended. So while Congress considers
whether or not to remove Trump from office, gun-control legislation will
languish, the deterioration of the nations infrastructure will proceed
apace, needed healthcare reforms will be tabled, the military-industrial
complex will waste yet more billions, and the national debt, already at $22
trillion larger, that is, than the entire economy will continue to
surge. The looming threat posed by climate change, much talked about of
late, will proceed all but unchecked. For those of us preoccupied with
Americas role in the world, the obsolete assumptions and habits
undergirding whats still called national security will continue to evade
examination. Our endless wars will remain endless and pointless.
By way of compensation, we might wonder what benefits impeachment is likely
to yield. Answering that question requires examining four scenarios that
describe the range of possibilities awaiting the nation.
The first and most to be desired (but least likely) is that Trump will tire
of being a public piñata and just quit. With the thrill of flying in Air
Force One having worn off, being president cant be as much fun these days.
Why put up with further grief? How much more entertaining for Trump to
retire to the political sidelines where he can tweet up a storm and indulge
his penchant for name-calling. And think of the deals an ex-president
could make in countries like Israel, North Korea, Poland, and Saudi Arabia
on which hes bestowed favors. Cha-ching! As of yet, however, the president
shows no signs of taking the easy (and lucrative) way out.
The second possible outcome sounds almost as good but is no less
implausible: a sufficient number of Republican senators rediscover their
moral compass and do the right thing, joining with Democrats to create the
two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump and send him packing. In the
Washington of that classic twentieth-century film director Frank Capra, with
Jimmy Stewart holding forth on the Senate floor and a moist-eyed Jean Arthur
cheering him on from the gallery, this might have happened. In the real
Washington of Moscow Mitch McConnell, think again.
The third somewhat seamier outcome might seem a tad more likely. It
postulates that McConnell and various GOP senators facing reelection in 2020
or 2022 will calculate that turning on Trump just might offer the best way
of saving their own skins. The presidents loyalty to just about anyone,
wives included, has always been highly contingent, the people streaming out
of his administration routinely making the point. So why should senatorial
loyalty to the president be any different? At the moment, however,
indications that Trump loyalists out in the hinterlands will reward such
turncoats are just about nonexistent. Unless that base were to flip, dont
expect Republican senators to do anything but flop.
That leaves outcome number four, easily the most probable: while the House
will impeach, the Senate will decline to convict. Trump will therefore stay
right where he is, with the matter of his fitness for office effectively
deferred to the November 2020 elections. Except as a source of
sadomasochistic diversion, the entire agonizing experience will, therefore,
prove to be a colossal waste of time and blather.
Furthermore, Donald Trump might well emerge from this national ordeal with
his reelection chances enhanced. Such a prospect is belatedly insinuating
itself into public discourse. For that reason, certain anti-Trump pundits
are already showing signs of going wobbly, suggesting, for instance, that
censure rather than outright impeachment might suffice as punishment for the
presidents various offenses. Yet censuring Trump while allowing him to stay
in office would be the equivalent of letting Harvey Weinstein off with a
good tongue-lashing so that he can get back to making movies. Censure is for
wimps.
Besides, as Trump campaigns for a second term, he would almost surely wear
censure like a badge of honor. Keep in mind that Congresss approval ratings
are considerably worse than his. To more than a few members of the public, a
black mark awarded by Congress might look like a gold star.
Not Removal but Restoration
So if Trump finds himself backed into a corner, Democrats arent necessarily
in a more favorable position. And that aint the half of it. Let me suggest
that, while Trump is being pursued, its you, my fellow Americans, who are
really being played. The unspoken purpose of impeachment is not removal, but
restoration. The overarching aim is not to replace Trump with Mike Pence
the equivalent of exchanging Groucho for Harpo. No, the object of the
exercise is to return power to those who created the conditions that enabled
Trump to win the White House in the first place.
Just recently, for instance, Hillary Clinton declared Trump to be an
illegitimate president. Implicit in her charge is the conviction no
doubt sincere that people like Donald Trump are not supposed to be
president. People like Hillary Clinton people possessing credentials like
hers and sharing her values should be the chosen ones. Here we glimpse the
true meaning of legitimacy in this context. Whatever the vote in the
Electoral College, Trump doesnt deserve to be president and never did.
For many of the main participants in this melodrama, the actual but unstated
purpose of impeachment is to correct this great wrong and thereby restore
history to its anointed path.
In a recent column in the Guardian, Professor Samuel Moyn makes the
essential point: Removing from office a vulgar, dishonest, and utterly
incompetent president comes nowhere close to capturing whats going on here.
To the elites most intent on ousting Trump, far more important than anything
he may say or do is what he signifies. He is a walking, talking repudiation
of everything they believe and, by extension, of a future they had come to
see as foreordained.
Moyn styles these anti-Trump elites as centrists, members of the post-Cold
War political mainstream that allowed ample room for nominally conservative
Bushes and nominally liberal Clintons, while leaving just enough space for
Barack Obamas promise of hope-and-(not-too-much) change.
These centrists share a common worldview. They believe in the universality
of freedom as defined and practiced within the United States. They believe
in corporate capitalism operating on a planetary scale. They believe in
American primacy, with the United States presiding over a global order as
the sole superpower. They believe in American global leadership, which
they define as primarily a military enterprise. And perhaps most of all,
while collecting degrees from Georgetown, Harvard, Oxford, Wellesley, the
University of Chicago, and Yale, they came to believe in a so-called
meritocracy as the preferred mechanism for allocating wealth, power, and
privilege. All of these together comprise the sacred scripture of
contemporary American political elites. And if Donald Trumps antagonists
have their way, his removal will restore that sacred scripture to its proper
place as the basis of policy.
For all their appeals to enduring moral values, Moyn writes, the
centrists are deploying a transparent strategy to return to power.
Destruction of the Trump presidency is a necessary precondition for
achieving that goal. Centrists simply want to return to the status quo
interrupted by Trump, their reputations laundered by their courageous
opposition to his mercurial reign, and their policies restored to
credibility. Precisely.
High Crimes and Misdemeanors
For such a scheme to succeed, however, laundering reputations alone will not
suffice. Equally important will be to bury any recollection of the
catastrophes that paved the way for an über-qualified centrist to lose to an
indisputably unqualified and unprincipled political novice in 2016.
Holding promised security assistance hostage unless a foreign leader agrees
to do you political favors is obviously and indisputably wrong. Trumps
antics regarding Ukraine may even meet some definition of criminal. Still,
how does such misconduct compare to the calamities engineered by the
centrists who preceded him? Consider, in particular, the George W. Bush
administrations decision to invade Iraq in 2003 (along with the spin-off
wars that followed). Consider, too, the reckless economic policies that
produced the Great Recession of 2007-2008. As measured by the harm inflicted
on the American people (and others), the offenses for which Trump is being
impeached qualify as mere misdemeanors.
Honest people may differ on whether to attribute the Iraq War to outright
lies or monumental hubris. When it comes to tallying up the consequences,
however, the intentions of those who sold the war dont particularly matter.
The results include thousands of Americans killed; tens of thousands
wounded, many grievously, or left to struggle with the effects of PTSD;
hundreds of thousands of non-Americans killed or injured; millions
displaced; trillions of dollars expended; radical groups like ISIS empowered
(and in its case even formed inside a U.S. prison in Iraq); and the Persian
Gulf region plunged into turmoil from which it has yet to recover. How do
Trumps crimes stack up against these?
The Great Recession stemmed directly from economic policies implemented
during the administration of President Bill Clinton and continued by his
successor. Deregulating the banking sector was projected to produce a
bonanza in which all would share. Yet, as a direct result of the ensuing
chicanery, nearly nine million Americans lost their jobs, while overall
unemployment shot up to 10%. Roughly four million Americans lost their homes
to foreclosure. The stock market cratered and millions saw their life
savings evaporate. Again, the question must be asked: How do these results
compare to Trumps dubious dealings with Ukraine?
Trumps critics speak with one voice in demanding accountability. Yet
virtually no one has been held accountable for the pain, suffering, and loss
inflicted by the architects of the Iraq War and the Great Recession. Why is
that? As another presidential election approaches, the question not only
goes unanswered, but unasked.
To win reelection, Trump, a corrupt con man (who jumped ship on his own
bankrupt casinos, money in hand, leaving others holding the bag) will cheat
and lie. Yet, in the politics of the last half-century, these do not qualify
as novelties. (Indeed, apart from being the son of a sitting U.S. vice
president, what made Hunter Biden worth $50Gs per month to a gas company
owned by a Ukrainian oligarch? Im curious.) That the president and his
associates are engaging in a cover-up is doubtless the case. Yet another
cover-up proceeds in broad daylight on a vastly larger scale. Trumps
shambolic presidency somehow seems less unsavory, Moyn writes, when
considering the fact that his critics refuse to admit how massively his
election signified the failure of their policies, from endless war to
economic inequality. Just so.
What are the real crimes? Who are the real criminals? No matter what happens
in the coming months, dont expect the Trump impeachment proceedings to come
within a country mile of addressing such questions.
Andrew Bacevich / TomDispatch
