CommentsGELFAND’S WORLD--I guess we do live in interesting times. Of the three occasions in American history that a president has been impeached by the House of Representatives, this is the most meritorious – possibly the only truly meritorious case out of the three.
The first time around, the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, it was some curiosity that even historians have trouble explaining. Then there was Bill Clinton, who was a bit reckless politically and a wee bit stupid in the way he defended himself. But he wasn’t guilty of a high crime at the national level. But Donald J Trump, president of the United States, should have been impeached long ago for a whole litany of crimes, violations of the Constitution, and insults to the social fabric.
During the final minutes of the debate in the House of Representatives, one Republican gave dire warnings that an impeachment vote could eventually rebound on the Democratic Party. Someday there will be a new congress where the Democrats will be in the minority, and they may find themselves defending a president from their own party. And so on and so forth, blah blah blah.
The thought that slowly began to percolate through my brain was this: By electing so many Democrats to the House in 2018, the American people – in the aggregate – were giving their permission for the impeachment. Particularly in all those districts where Republican control was replaced with a brand new Democrat, the message was clear – we don’t accept this kind of behavior and we don’t accept those who condone it. A lot of those voters may very well have been expecting the impeachment since the day after the election.
One issue that was, unfortunately, left out of the articles of impeachment was this: What do you call it when all those foreign countries make their hotel reservations at one of Trump’s properties? This could have been another bribery count. And all those instances of obstruction of justice that were detailed in the Mueller report – this was the time to place them into the historical record as articles of impeachment.
Another thought: The Republicans and their apologists have been pounding the table, trying to sell the idea that the impeachment will rebound on the Democrats. I suspect that it will be the other way around. Coming into this week, a majority of Americans expressed their desire that the impeachment happen. I suspect – now that the possibility has become reality – that more Americans will jump on the bandwagon. Impeachment will be accepted as the new reality rather than treated as conjecture. It’s just a guess on my part, and we’ll know in a couple of weeks as new polls come out.
One other thing. My generation has witnessed two-thirds of all the presidential impeachments in American history. Just one more thing to think about in considering how politics has evolved since the closing years of the twentieth century and during this first one-fifth of the new century. For me, the take home lesson is that the Republican Party really has become a radical force that has been willing to violate once-accepted traditions. The year 2021 may be a chance for the Democrats to do their own substantive changes, but they won’t have a lot of time.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
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