I'm no Trump fan — but the hyperbolic way Democrats talk about impeachment is getting pretty tiresome
The impeachment of President Donald Trump is a historic moment in United States history. After all, only two other presidents have been formally impeached by the House and tried in the Senate.
But whether Trump gets removed or not — and conventional wisdom says he won't — will have little effect on the capability of the government to function as it typically does. One wouldn't know that with the dire-straits pontificating of Democrats in charge.
Last week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in extending her go-ahead for Democrats to draft articles of impeachment against Trump, said in her remarks, "Our democracy is at stake." Judiciary Chairman, Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, in his opening remarks before an impeachment hearing this week, said, "The integrity of our next election is at stake."
NBC's Chuck Todd, who should know better, asked Nadler on Meet the Press this weekend, "If [the president is] acquitted, do you believe we'll have a fair election in 2020?" Daniel S Goldman, a lawyer for the House Intelligence Committee, said Trump presented a "clear and present danger to our free and fair elections and to our national security."
Such comments and questions are ludicrous. Not to downplay the seriousness of impeachment, but people are doing a disservice to the nation and the United States’ system of government by pretending the country will turn into some banana republic if Trump remains in office.
The United States withstood the near split of the nation, fewer than 80 years after its founding because of the Civil War. A little more than 40 years later, America fought in the First World War. Then it suffered through the Great Depression and then entered the Second World War. Then there was the Korean War. The Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Vietnam, Watergate, the Iran hostage crisis, 9/11.
Despite all the turmoil brought about by those events, do people really think a reality-show host from Queens, NY will spell the downfall of the nation if the Senate acquits him in a trial?
Michael Anton, a former senior national security official in the Trump administration, has practiced similar rhetoric in the past. In 2016, under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, he wrote an essay titled "The Flight 93 Election." In it, Anton compared the election of 2016 to the fateful flight of 9/11, writing, "2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit, or you die." In other words, vote for Trump over Hillary, or everything is over.
Today, Congress is very close to getting a deal done for the USMCA, aka NAFTA II, and passing other legislation such as the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act. House Democrats have spent a year in talks with the White House about USMCA, with both sides working towards addressing particular concerns before the announcement that they will move forward with the legislation together this morning. Our democracy is working, even amid an impeachment investigation. Democrats are working alongside Donald Trump and his supportive Republican colleagues to get things done. If the entire constructs of our democracy were at stake, there’s no way this would be happening.
The latest manner of political rabble-rousing doesn't win arguments. It doesn't persuade anyone. If anything, it will give them a reason to dig in and hold to a particular set of beliefs, no matter how outrageous they are.
I think Trump pushed the boundaries of executive power to the limit. He's created an environment where Democrats, instead of reining in that power, have promised to expand it, saying what they'll do on "day one" of their administration and bypassing Congress if it doesn't acquiesce to their demands.
That is unhealthy. It could lead to the use of impeachment as a partisan political tool rather than a mechanism for which Congress can render judgment on the actions of the president, regardless of party. That's more of a threat to our democracy than impeachment itself.
The safeguards in the Constitution exist to keep the republic from going to hell in a handbasket. Whatever happens, the United States will continue to operate as usual, long after Donald Trump leaves office. We should have enough sense — and enough faith in our country — to continue to believe that. A president’s time in the White House is under threat. The foundation of our democracy is not.
