Today a sitting President is likely to be impeached, for only the third time in our nation’s history. A man who was elected just three years ago, and has been harassed since the day of his inauguration about simple exaggerations about things like the size of his crowd.
He immediately moved toward fulfilling his campaign promises, initiating a move of the American Embassy in Israel and restricting immigration from countries with large numbers of Islamists. He signed a tax reduction for both individuals and businesses. He reduced the burdensome regulations that handcuff homeowners and companies. He put a legally expert, generally originalist judge onto the Supreme Court. He put in place Ajit Pai, delaying if not ending the threat of Net Neutrality. He authorized the largest pay increase for the military in nine years.
Despite these successes – or, arguably, because of them – Democrats have been demanding Trump’s ouster since before he was even seated as Presidents. Today they get as far as they are likely to go on that, which is to impeach him.
This is the stance of many in this country, and there’s nothing in it which is technically incorrect. It’s woefully incomplete, however.
The failures of Trump have been chronicled for the last year and a half on this site. It is not, nor was it ever meant to be, an anti-Trump site… but one could hardly tell that from reading the articles or the comments. We have, absolutely, given the American President the majority of our attention.
This is because the President and his party have commanded that attention with their actions, even more than Obama did before him. Not content to let his administration be seen as performing actions independently, Trump gets into Twitter every day to broadcast his image as a puppetmaster in direct control of every aspect of government.
Even his successes are qualified. Yes, he signed a large military pay increase… Obama signed a larger one, and Bush signed larger ones during every year he was in office. His deregulation has been aimed overwhelmingly toward one industry, coal… an industry which contributed heavily toward his campaign. For every single one of his achievements, there is a valid counterpoint.
Amidst it all he has been corrupt, gaining monetarily for himself and his family through abuse of his authority; he has elevated our enemies in a potentially traitorous behavior, subordinating American policy to that of Russia, Turkey, and North Korea and engaging in very limited aggression against the actions of China, Iran and the Taliban; and he has consolidated power in direct opposition to the intent of the framers of the Constitution.
He has violated his oath of office as a matter of course. Arguments which previously would have been the focus of attention for days, such as whether he has the authority to increase tariffs without direct authorization from Congress, are now set aside as minor infractions while more pressing offenses are attended to.
There will be whining from his supporters because of the action today. “I hope you’re happy now,” they will say, either verbatim or through implication. “He’ll be impeached, but it’s not going to mean anything because the Senate won’t remove him.”
They’re wrong. Not about the callow Senators who have also abandoned any fealty to the Constitution and our history in favor of castoffs from the windows of the Trump grift train; it is overwhelmingly likely that Trump will not be removed from office. But this does mean something. It means that some people are still standing up for this country and its founding principles. I don’t have to believe all of them are doing it for the right reasons – I don’t believe that Trump put Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court for the right reasons, after all, and I still think that nomination was generally a good one – to appreciate the meat of what they’re doing.
This is a day when the country’s founding arguments are going up against the cult of personality and winning. I hope you’re happy, because I am.
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