To impeach or not to impeach. Is that the question? The impeachment argument goes like this. It is only twenty months until the next president is sworn in. Democrats without number are in the field and most would beat Trump in a head-to head contest according to polls.
Impeachment in the House would be possible. The Mueller report provides a road map and continuing actions by Trump provide new counts for an indictment, but a Senate controlled by pliant Republicans would never vote to convict by the needed margin, no matter how many smoking guns are in evidence. This might leave a badly damaged president still in power and an equally besmirched and complicit Senate availble to do his biding.
Trump will contnue to deny, obfuscate, counterattack and play the martyr, rally the base, resort to even more smears, fictions, distractions and subterfuges to divide the country further and win another four years. Better to concentrate on a win at the ballot box than risk an impeachment and trial.
But should such a creature be left in power for another twenty months, and possibly four more years? This is a man who undermines the Constitution daily, attacking religious freedom, press freedom, the rule of law, the courts, and the separation of powers.
He has spoken in favor of white supremacists, and tried to limit women’s rights, made a mockery of our heritage as a haven for those fleeing oppression and seeking opportunity, set out to destroy long-lasting alliances with democracies and has cozied up to tyrants, has launched a trade war that threatens our economic well-being and carelessly invites military conflict with Iran.
He has purged the Justice Department and is on the way to turning it into a legal version of the Praetorian Guard, has ignored the warnings of his intelligence services, installed toadies willing to prevent cabinet departments from performing their legally mandated functions, refused to recognize the authority of the judicial and legislative branches, and weakened our power globally, all while misleading and misrepresenting his aims to friend and foe alike.
If unchecked, can such a president be expected to behave differently in the future? Or is he more likely to spend each day destroying another norm, retailing another lie, violating another law, and using his power to enrich himself and impoverish his country, to use any means fair or foul to retain power, obstruct justice, pervert elections, destroy critics, discriminate against groups he fears, and advance the fortunes of those willing to pledge fealty to him?
This is not how a president of a democracy governs and, if permitted to get away with it, may leave this country no more free than those states whose autocrats he admires — Russia, Turkey, North Korea, China.
The Constitution provides the tools needed to prevent such a denouement, but patriots must be willing to use them. We are a nation of laws, not of men, only so long as men and women act to make it so. We forget at our peril the words of Ben Franklin.
As the Constitutional Convention disbanded, a woman in the street asked the sage of Philadelphia what kind of government they had designed. Franklin said, “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” It falls to each generation to see that we keep it. Is the present cohort up to the task?