A Matter of Noses
Democrats in the House of Representatives are faced with a stark choice. They can follow the politically expedient path: keep questioning the Trump Presidency, but emphasize the other, more popular aspects of the Democratic Agenda. This is the direction that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would like to follow. She rightly sees all of the benefits: it contrasts a Democratic platform of helping the working class, solving the insurance issue, and stepping back from brinksmanship on the Southern Border and the rest of the world; with the scattered and terrifying Trump approach. The Speaker sees that as the best plan to keep the House, gain the Senate, and win the Presidency.
The other option is to proceed with impeachment proceedings, even though there is little chance that, no matter what is revealed, the Senate would ever even take up the matter, much less vote to remove the President. The “nose count” is simple: it requires twenty Republican Senators and all of the Democrats to agree to remove Mr. Trump. Impeaching the President would inevitably become the singular issue in the House of Representatives, and seems to be exactly what the Trump Administration wants.
“We want to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy, or is this not a job for the House of Representatives?” (CJ Cregg in the television series, – The West Wing– air date, October 24, 2001)
The President and his strategists must have watched a lot ofWest Wing over the years; echoes of the show turn up in many of the White House actions (not that I would ever equate Trump with the fictional Josiah Bartlet.) They have reached the same political decision: that the best move for them is to let the House of Representatives investigate, and even better, move to impeach the President. The Trump “aura” has always been that of a victim, treated unfairly first by the Republican Party, then by the media, then by the intelligence agencies, and now by the House. What better “victim” image then to be impeached. Trump will claim that the House is trying to overturn the “will of the voters,” despite losing the election by over three million votes, and try to ride that victimhood to four more years of the Presidency.
And he can make that look even better, by trying to stymie every move of the House to gather information. Regardless of the law, the President has tried to prevent witnesses from testifying and House committees from gathering information. He has even claimed “executive privilege” over the redacted portions of the Mueller Report, and is actively preventing Mueller himself from testifying to the House Judiciary Committee. And if the Courts overrule him, then Trump can claim to be a “victim” and then show himself to his base as a winner, fighting the unrelenting “liberals,” the “Obama Courts” and the “media.”
With all of this, why would the House even consider the “I-word” impeachment? The answer is simple: duty.
The House of Representatives, according to the Constitution, has the ”sole power” of impeachment (US Constitution Art. 1, §2.) With the Department of Justice’s ruling that the President of the United States cannot be indicted or prosecuted while in office, the House becomes the only check on Presidential power, behavior, or criminality. The President can be impeached and removed from office for “…committing treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” (US Constitution Art II, § 4.)
The House is the ultimate check on Presidential powers and actions. If the members of the House determine that the President has in fact committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” (high crimes are not necessarily legally defined felonies, but are actions that go against the interest of the Constitution or the US Government); then they have an obligation under the Constitution to proceed. Though impeachment has seldom been exercised, only three times in US History; that rarity emphasizes its importance.
House members have a Constitutional duty to determine if a President has committed an impeachable offense. That determination process is through investigation; it would be dereliction of that duty if the House failed to examine witnesses and documents to determine if offenses have occurred. With the evidence already publicly available about President Trump’s actions presenting a “prima facie” case, it is difficult to see how the House cannot proceed.
My mother used to have an expression: “don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.” It took a long time for me to understand what she meant by that, but what I finally determined was that I shouldn’t do something, even if it seemed like the right thing to do, if it ultimately made the situation worse.
Duty: the House must investigate the President. The best and legally most effective way to do this is to start impeachment proceedings. Politics: Democrats want to end the Trump Presidency and the McConnell tyranny in the Senate. The best way to do that, continue to contrast Democratic ideas with Republican actions.
So Speaker Pelosi, and the Democrats of the House of Representatives are faced with that difficult choice, political expediency, or Constitutional duty — and the nose thing.
