To Impeach or Not to Impeach: What does it all mean?

 

Adam Schiff presiding over the impeachment hearings (Image: thedailywake.com)

“You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.” 
Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Article 2, section IV of the US Constitution states that “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

It is worth clarifying the process and implications of impeachment before we dive into a discussion of the current proceedings. For starters, if a President is impeached it does not mean that he or she has to vacate the office. Bill Clinton was impeached and served out his full term. Removal from office is a separate process that requires a trial in the Senate. It is presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with Senators serving as jurors.

In the House, Democrats currently hold 235 seats and need 218 votes to reach the majority required to proceed with articles of impeachment against President Trump. If the House proceeds to impeach, the Senate will conduct a trial and vote on whether to remove the President from office. Given that Democrats do not hold a majority in the Senate, they would need twenty Republicans and two independent senators to join them to remove Mr. Trump from office.

Additionally, removal from office does not bar Mr. Trump from running again in 2020. The Senate would need a further vote under Article I, Section 3 of the constitution to determine if the offence is severe enough to prevent the President from ever holding public office again.

Now let’s get to the matter of the impeachment itself. Beyond bribery and treason, which are clear cut, I believe the founders purposely left the words “high crimes and misdemeanors” vague so as to ensure that this mechanism would not be used frivolously or in a partisan manner. This is why removal from office requires a detailed investigation by the House and then a further trial in the Senate, with a super majority needed to remove a President from office. It is rare for one party to hold the necessary seats in both chambers at the same time; thus it requires an offence so egregious that it brings unity across party lines to remove a democratically elected official from the highest office in the country.

Another point worth noting is that impeachment is not a legal process. While similar terminology is used, this is a political process. There is no burden to prove that the President broke laws in the same way you would need to in a courtroom. Impeachment is driven by the legislature deeming that the actions of the President constitute an egregious abuse of power.

Given that only two Presidents have been impeached, the first in 1868, and none ever removed from office there is little by way of a roadmap for this process. Nixon resigned before Congress could vote to impeach him. Interestingly, in the case of Bill Clinton the House appointed a special prosecutor to investigate his crimes and did not conduct public hearings. The vote by the House judiciary committee to move forward with a full impeachment inquiry against President Clinton was along party lines with every Democrat opposing it.

The special prosecutor’s investigation into President Clinton dragged on for four years, by the end of it public opinion turned in the favour of the President even though there was evidence that he had lied under oath and obstructed justice. This is why President Clinton was acquitted by the Senate with ten and five Republican Senator's, respectively, joining every Democrat to acquit him on each of the charges. At the time polls showed that the majority of the country was against removing the President from office with 57% approving the Senate's decision to keep him in office and two thirds stating that the contentious impeachment process had been harmful for the country.

Of course, we live in very different times from when President Clinton was impeached and President Nixon resigned. In 2019, the country is probably about as divided as it was leading up to the civil war, and credibility among lawmakers is in short supply on both sides of the aisle. Trust in government and in public officials is at its lowest ebb since reaching a peak in the 1970’s.

On one side you have Republicans who seem to have not only abandoned their most cherished Conservative philosophies of small government, but also no longer seem to believe that the person holding the highest office in the land should be honest, decent or act with decorum. Republicans like Paul Ryan, John McCain and Jeff Flake, who were willing to stand up to the President and hold him accountable in private and when necessary in public, have either resigned or are no longer living. Even lawmakers like Senator Graham who openly lambasted candidate Trump during the primaries have turned into allies. So what accounts for this loyalty? If you look at Trump’s record he has delivered on issues that align with their political interests, from corporate tax cuts and dismantling regulations to appointing conservative justices, including two to the Supreme Court. With the Presidents’ base holding firm and in the absence of a smoking gun, they are making a political calculation to support the President and will continue to do so until public opinion overwhelmingly swings against him.

On the other side you have Democrats who have been publicly calling for the President's head since his shock victory in 2016. They have spent the best part of three years investigating every aspect of the President’s public and private life, from scrutinising his charities and foreign business interests to trying to expose his tax returns. First they were hopeful that the trial of Paul Manafort would sink Mr. Trump. Then they proclaimed that Michael Cohen’s testimony “moves the Needle' to Trump WH”. When nothing worked they put their hopes in the Mueller report landing the final blow and swaying public opinion in favour of impeachment. Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intel Committee, leading the investigations into the President publicly stated at the time that there was "ample evidence" of collusion in plain sight, "and that is true." The very real danger for Democrats is that because they have been crying wolf for so long, their case for impeachment, even if it is a strong one, will be viewed as nothing more than partisan overreach, or worse a move to placate an angry and frustrated base ahead of a crucial election.

This is the reason Speaker Pelosi waited so long to officially move forward with an impeachment inquiry even though a majority of Democrats had been calling for it for over a year. The Ukraine whistleblower story led to the first marked shift in public opinion, with a slim overall majority (52%) supporting an impeachment inquiry. This shift was entirely due to Independents. The lessons of dragging out an impeachment investigation also weigh on Speaker Pelosi because it allowed President Clinton to leave office with a 65% approval rating, the second highest of any President after FDR. This is the reason she urged Democrats to move from closed door to public hearings and has vowed publicly not let the impeachment circus drag on too far into next year.

The other issue that Speaker Pelosi astutely understands is that nobody, including Trump supporters, denies that the President routinely lies, demeans people, behaves erratically and possesses none of the qualities of a role model. In fact, 70% of Americans agree that President Trump’s request to a foreign leader to investigate his political rival was wrong. There is no debate on this fact. However, not everyone agrees that this is reason enough to tear an already divided and polarised country further apart, and many believe this is why we have elections. If we look at support for impeachment and removal, beyond Independents it breaks down along party lines with 84.6 percent Democrats supporting it and 91.7 percent of Republicans opposing it. These numbers have held steady for the last year.

Finally, what makes the Democrat's case harder to make is that there is no smoking gun, like a stained blue dress or a conspiracy to destroy secret White House tapes. At the end of the first two weeks of hearings not one witness “testified that Trump himself directly ordered them to make a quid pro quo explicit to the Ukrainians.” In fact, if one thing has come to light during the public hearings, it is that President Trump made little attempt at subterfuge. Instead he openly made it clear to his ambassadors, diplomats and senior advisors that he wanted to press Ukraine to open an investigation into the Bidens, and in the end the military aid was released without any such commitment. When there is subterfuge, chicanery or evidence of a cover-up, it becomes easier to make the case for a conspiracy and point at wrongdoing, but in the absence of this, the whole thing could be painted as more clumsy than criminal.

This is why we saw Speaker Pelosi use the word bribery for the first time after the initial round of public hearings. Speaker Pelosi is aware that having witnesses simply corroborate facts will not be sufficient to sway people since the majority already agrees that the President’s actions were wrong but not on whether it rises to the level of impeaching and removing the President from office. Public opinion is deeply entrenched along partisan lines and will not be swayed easily. Ultimately, the severity and punishment for the President’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” will boil down to the strength of the argument made by Democrats or the defense put up by Republicans. The key for both sides is to make their case and convince Independents.

Democrats will need to offer compelling new evidence while trying to ensure that this process does not in the end help the President, by painting him as a victim of legislative overreach, and allow him to win a second-term.

 

Jussie Smollett and the Righteous Race to Judgement

“Trust, But Verify.” 

-Russian Proverb

I first learned about the attack on Jussie Smollett when the news was blowing up on social media. My immediate reaction was one of horror and sympathy. However, once I began to read about the details of the attack, my antennae went up.

Mr. Smollett is a black man who is gay, and that made him the perfect target. His claim that the attackers put a rope around his neck and poured bleach on him powerfully re-enforced the victimization narrative on the left. The fact that his attackers also proclaimed proudly “this is MAGA country” seemed to leave no room for doubt in the minds of the left, in terms of the presumption of guilt.

Journalists and celebrities immediately seized on the attack as vindication of the fact that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was responsible for another reprehensible attack. Politicians, who are supposed to keep their heads when all of us are losing ours, also rushed to judgement. Democratic presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Corey Booker, who were preparing for a Senate vote on a bi-partisan anti-lynching bill, used the attack as proof of “modern-day lynching”.

The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted that “The racist, homophobic attack on Jussie Smollett is an affront to our humanity” and Adam Schiff, the head of the House’s investigative panel tweeted that he had personally met with Jussie Smollett and had “…seen the passion and moral clarity of his activism first hand”. Both have since deleted their tweets.

I am not suggesting that I knew that Mr. Smollett was lying; I had not even considered the possibility. The problem for me was that the whole thing felt perfect, almost scripted to fit the narrative on the left about Trump and anyone who voted for him; and that bothered me.

In addition, I also thought it best to reserve judgement on the heels of the media’s recently botched Covington Catholic School student’s story. That was another case of a dangerous rush to judgement before the full facts were apparent. We now know that the boys, who were summarily branded racist Trump supporters by the mainstream media, have been fully vindicated. The Washington Post noted that an independent investigation into the incident revealed “no evidence of ‘racist or offensive statements’ by Covington Catholic students.”  

It turns out the Native American man, who claimed to be the victim of the boys’ racist taunts, lied about it, and the offensive and racist chants came from a group calling themselves the black Hebrew Israelites. It would seem that the boys’ only crime was wearing MAGA hats.

Yet, here we were again with media, politicians and celebrities presuming innocence and blindly attributing guilt before the police had even launched their investigation. More worryingly, even after Mr. Smollett refused to hand over his cellphone to the police, the conviction of many was not shaken. It would seem these people were not interested in the facts, so confident in the belief that a gay man, a man of colour, a liberal would never lie, leave alone do anything as heinous as fake the whole crime.

We live in an age where social media encourages a constant rush to judgement, on both the left and the right. We seek refuge in events that fit a pre-determined narrative and we side only with those who confirm our biases, while rejecting outright any facts that challenge them. This ensures a loss of integrity and fair-mindedness in our debates. Further, there is a growing trend, on both sides, to gauge “truth” based not on hard facts but on political beliefs, sex or colour of skin.

What is even more troubling is that there is a nonsensical belief among many on the left that anyone who did not vote for Trump has some claim to moral superiority, and is a better human being. For example many on the left accept as gospel that anyone who voted for Trump is a racist, and Clinton voters are not. If that is true, then how do we explain the fact that over 8 million people who voted for Obama in 2012 chose Trump in 2016? Or an IPSOS/Reuters poll from 2016 that found nearly one-third of Clinton supporters described black people as more “violent” and “criminal” than whites; this is not an insignificant number. A more recent study done by Yale University also found that Democrats and white liberals have a tendency to downplay their own verbal competence in exchanges with racial minorities, while there was no statistical significance when it came to Republicans.

The fact is that no group has any moral or ethical superiority over another based on religion, political beliefs, sexual orientation or skin colour. If this were true, we would still have faith in the Catholic Church and Bill Cosby would be ‘America’s Dad’. It is true that minorities have suffered disproportionately more discrimination than their white counterparts in this country, but none of this changes the fact that we still need to judge every person based on his or her actions, and the punishment must fit the crime. There is a good reason why justice is meant to be blind.

Indian, Jewish, White, Muslim, Black or Asian husbands are all equally likely to cheat on their wives or beat them. Similarly, it is ludicrous to suggest that liberal women cheat more often than conservative women, or suggest that gay men cheat less than straight men. People are people and all human beings have the same propensity for good and bad within them - it depends entirely on the individual; as an Indian social activist who spent his life championing minority rights eloquently said “no community has a monopoly over virtue or vice”.

As long as we fail to see the faults in the people we love, or to acknowledge the virtues in those we profess to hate and continue to apply different standards to both for the same actions, we will only serve to propagate bigotry and division. If we truly want an equal society, then the question we all need to answer is “do we want to live in a country that judges everyone based on the content of their character, or the colour of their skin?”

 

2018 Midterm Election Results: A Non-Partisan Commentary

 

(Image: thepawprintdaa.com)

 “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.”

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

Neither side was humiliated; both can claim victory to some extent, which is extremely rare for a midterm election, especially one with such a polarizing and unpopular President. However, both parties should feel a sense of humility and that means it was a good night for America.

There was no blue wave as Democrats not only failed to flip the Senate but actually lost seats, and while they made some gains in Governor races, they came up short in key swing states like Florida and Ohio. Also, the majority of House seats they picked up were in districts that Hillary Clinton won, meaning there was already a built-in anti-Trump voting block there. They failed to flip many of the districts that Obama and Trump both carried, which a blue wave would have done. Meanwhile, Republicans were also sent a clear message by the electorate that people want a check on this President and a return to balance of power in Washington. No more one party rule.

If you look at the graphic below, the visual shows a balance between red and blue, across the board. These mixed results tell me two things.

First, and most importantly the country rejected Trump’s dangerous vilification of immigrants (which was his closing argument on the campaign trail) by giving Democrats the power to stop unconscionable policies like separating and detaining children. Second, while even his supporters disagree with the President’s most extreme policies and sharp elbows, they are willing to support initiatives that make sense like re-negotiating trade agreements to better protect US wages, infrastructure spending to create jobs and efforts to bring down the ridiculous cost of life-saving prescription drugs. And Democrats would do well to remember that if the majority of the electorate supported blind resistance to this President, there would have been a blue wave flipping many more states and local races.

Democrats should also consider that midterms are historically a rebuke of the President and the majority party and much less a vote of confidence in the opposition. So the party that had been hollowed out under Obama, losing the US Senate, the House, the majority of Governorship's, and state and local legislatures, will now need to work to regain the trust of the electorate, based on their actions leading up to 2020, and not by simply being blindly partisan or obstructionist.

The other important factor to support my conclusion is that the majority of Democratic congressional candidates who won campaigned as centrists. Majority are newcomers who said they were tired of the partisan gamesmanship and were running to fix Washington by reaching across the aisle. Importantly, not one of these candidates ran on the promise to remove the President from office or ever mentioned impeachment.

What we are seeing from albeit a divided electorate is a mandate for both parties to work together and low tolerance for blind partisan resistance and political payback. They want their elected representatives to find solutions to non-partisan issues that are important to all Americans. Frankly, I believe government works better when both sides are forced to compromise and neither has a complete majority; it seems many Americans agree.

I was glad to see Nancy Pelosi strike a conciliatory tone after seeing the results described above. She talked about unifying the country by working together with the President for all Americans, while ensuring they would also be a check on his worst instincts. The President also called Ms. Pelosi to congratulate her and Mr. Schumer, expressing a desire to work with Democrats.

Now Ms. Pelosi will need to ensure that her caucus shows the same maturity and steers clear of frivolous subpoenas and investigation like Benghazi, or wasting taxpayer money trying to impeach the President (unless Mr. Mueller finds something incriminating). Instead, Democrats need to focus on delivering on the promises that their young and historically diverse group of Congress women and men made to their constituents – that of working with the President to secure the future of DREAMERS, funding infrastructure to create jobs and fixing Obamacare once and for all, issues that a majority of Americans agree on.

Of course, none of this means that the President will change his behaviour or that both parties will forgive, forget and put aside ideological differences and divisive rhetoric. However, I believe that the party that makes an effort to reach across the aisle and is genuinely seen to be fighting for all Americans will reap the rewards in 2020.