Today
There is so much to talk about today. The President gave a speech last night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that four years ago would have caused a national crisis. Almost everything he said was a lie. Among those falsehoods, he managed to call the FBI “scum”, and convicted felons “great people”. He is a President unmoored from reality, and willing to say literally anything to further his own ambitions.
And his Attorney General, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States, also attacked his own FBI and Justice Department. Instead of standing for his employees, he said that the Inspector General’s Report, after two years, got everything wrong.
The Washington Post is reenacting their great story of the early 1970’s, the Pentagon Papers that revealed the decades of lies surrounding the Vietnam War. This modern version deals with our historically longest war in Afghanistan, now eighteen years old. Like the Pentagon of the 1960’s, the Post discovered that what we are told about US goals and achievements in Afghanistan have been intentionally falsified to fool the American people. And it’s been going on for decades.
And quietly, the President is planning to announce that Jews in America are now not just a religion, but legally a race. This is a fundamental change in American thinking and policy to achieve short-term political gains. It raises serious questions about an action that further divides Americans into factions.
All of these warrant examination. And they all happened yesterday.
Impeaching the President
But, fifty years from now, December 11th, 2019 will be known as the day that the House of Representatives presented Articles of Impeachment of the President of the United States. So while all of the other crises today are dramatic and important, this is the one that “…history will have its eyes on.”
The Constitution was ratified in 1788, and our current form of government began in 1789. In the two hundred and thirty years since, Congress and the President have only reached this impasse four times. It is worth examining the conditions of those historic actions, to get a better understanding of today’s extraordinary situation.
Compromise Gone Wrong
Andrew Johnson was the President who wasn’t supposed to be. In the summer of 1864, as the Union Armies poured blood onto the fields of Virginia, Abraham Lincoln’s reelection was by no means a sure thing. General George McClellan, the “Hero of Antietam,” was the Democratic candidate. He was willing to end the war without victory, and so end the massive casualty lists printed in the daily papers.
Lincoln needed to assure a broad coalition to regain the White House and finish the cause that those who sacrificed had “…thus far so nobly advanced”. So he dropped his first Vice President, Republican Hannibal Hamlin of Maine. Lincoln, a Republican as well, ran under the “National Union” Party, and chose as his second running mate a “War Democrat,” the Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson.
Johnson’s sole job was to balance the ticket. By the fall the situation on the battlefield changed as well, as General Sherman captured Atlanta in September. Lincoln was reelected in November, and in the spring of 1865, the Radical Republican Congress and the President were planning for the Reconstruction of the Union.
John Wilkes Booth changed those plans, with a bullet to Lincoln’s head. Andrew Johnson, the War Democrat, the former slave owner, was now the President of the United States.
The Future of the Union
Johnson’s version of reconstructing the Union was to return the South to pre-war status, less the slaves. Johnson supported the discriminatory laws that kept the former slaves in a second-class status, and vetoed twenty-nine bills passed by Congress. The Congress overrode over half of his vetoes, and ultimately the ideological divide over the future of the country led the Congress to try to restrict Johnson’s power. They passed the Tenure of Office Act, again over his veto, and required Presidential appointments that needed Senate approval, to need Senate approval to be removed as well.
Johnson ignored the law, and fired his Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. This became the core charge in Johnson’s impeachment, though there were a total of eleven articles.
So, like Johnson or not, the historic basis for his impeachment was a difference in policy beliefs between him and the Congress. Johnson held onto his Presidency by one vote in the Senate. That vote was cast by Kansas Senator Edmund G. Ross and immortalized by John F. Kennedy in his book, Profiles in Courage. While Ross showed a willingness to risk his political future, the practical effect of his vote was to put civil rights for black citizens on hold for a century.
A Simple Crime
It would be one hundred and four years for impeachment to be considered again. Impeachment articles for Nixon were written for using the powers of his office to attack his political enemies, and to orchestrate a cover-up of the crimes. Despite Nixon’s public assertions that “I am not a crook,” in reality, he was exactly that, violating Federal criminal laws. His own Justice Department rebelled when Nixon tried to fire the investigators examining his actions, and the Special Prosecutor’s investigation was key to discovering the President’s culpability.
When the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over audiotapes of White House meetings and his criminal conduct was apparent, Congressional leaders from his own Republican Party warned him he would be removed from office. Nixon, aware not only of the historic significance of being removed, but also his personal financial implications, resigned from office.
So with Johnson we had an impeachment based on political differences. With Nixon, we had an impeachment based on clear criminal conduct.
Disgraceful or Impeachable
I’m a Democrat, and I was a Democrat in 1998 as well. Bill Clinton disgraced the Presidency. He took advantage of a twenty-one year old intern and had a sexual affair literally in the halls of the White House. As a teacher at the time, I found myself having delicate conversations with my high school seniors about oral sex, DNA samples on blue dresses, and where cigars might go. In our current “Me-Too” era, Clinton’s actions would have resulted in his immediate resignation. That should have happened in 1998 too.
But it didn’t. Clinton determined to stay in the White House, and tried to “weasel” his way out of the scandal by making a case that “oral gratification” wasn’t actually sex. That didn’t go over well in my classroom, and nor with the Federal Courts, who found his testimony perjurous.
So Clinton committed perjury. He ultimately was disbarred in Arkansas for it. And Clinton abused an intern, even though she was “of legal age”. The question that confronted the Congress was did those acts reach the standard for removal from office.
High Crimes
The Founding Fathers used a term of art, “high crimes and misdemeanors”. “High Crimes” were crimes against the state, the government, as opposed to “low” crimes that were crimes against individuals. Abuse of power might not even be a crime in a legal sense, but it could be a “high crime” if done by a President. Killing a King would be a “high crime,” killing the man next door, not so much.
So were Clinton’s sexual exploits, and his lying about it, a “high crime” or a “low crime”? That was the question examined by the House of Representatives in 1998. The problem that many of those gentlemen ran into was their own sexual dalliances. Speaker Gingrich was in the process of divorcing his wife and marrying a staff member, Speaker Livingston was forced to confess to an affair, and ultimately Speaker Hastert led the House. It wasn’t until much later we found out about his prior perversions with the high school wrestlers he coached.
Clinton was impeached along party lines, and the Articles sent to the Senate. After a long Senate trial, has was acquitted. This too is a “term of art;” acquitted. Clinton was not exonerated, nor was he innocent. But the Senate determined that his actions did not rise to the “high crime” level of impeachable offenses.
Impeaching this President
So here we are today. The House of Representatives is considering two Articles of Impeachment against President Donald J. Trump. The House is saying that the President committed two “high crimes”. The first: using the power of his office to gain foreign intervention to advance his own personal political campaign. The second: using those same powers to obstruct the investigation into his actions.
What the Senate, and ultimately the nation, will have to decide is what kind of impeachment is this. Is this an impeachment of policy difference, as many Republicans claim, like the Johnson impeachment? Or is this a criminal impeachment, one where reasonable Congressional leadership would go to Mr. Trump, as they did to Mr. Nixon, and ask him to resign? Or are these actually “low crimes,” not deserving of removal from office, as the 1999 Senate decided about Clinton?
The Senate will probably decide this January. As I listen to Senator Lindsey Graham rail on about the 2016 election (the Senate grilling of Mr. Horowitz has just begun), it’s clear that the bipartisanship of the Nixon impeachment won’t be possible. It is likely that the Senate will vote along Party lines, and Trump will stay in office.
But the evidence of Trump’s actions is being presented not just to the Senate, but also to the American people. So while the President may still remain in office this January, it will be the people that have the final say in November of 2020.
Hopefully the election will be fair.
