The trial to acquit President Donald Trump of the impeachment charges against him is well underway, with the US Senate sitting until Saturday night, and then resuming next week.
The full solemnity of the occasion is measured in the silly rules that are applied to the 100 senators during their more than 12-hour days: no talking to each other, no electronics, no food.
Party leaders serve as Senate officers to prosecute and defend. The fantasy of Trump sat in a dock hearing the charges against him is exactly that; the president is instead at Davos, yelling at Greta Thunberg, and apparently watching the trial from Air Force One.
To convict the president — this is your regular reminder that he has already been impeached — 67 votes are required.
The Republicans have a 53-47 majority, so barring evidence of… I don’t know what — I can’t think of any wholly new thing that would meet the standard, short of tape of Trump saying “fuck America, show me the money” — Trump will be acquitted.
Since the Republicans control the impeachment trial process, there won’t be any such surprise.
The two charges are abuse of power, for Ukraine-gate — we appear to have stopped using the “-gate” suffix, a sure sign of an era shift — and obstruction of Congress, for the way in which the White House has resisted the investigation itself.
Watching the thing burble on through the Australian night, one was struck by the combination of history, tedium and fait accompli.
Here is the trial of a leader with the de jure control of a nuclear arsenal and armed forces at his disposal, with removal from office the penalty. Removal from office de jure also.
There’s no guarantee that Trump would go if convicted. But, of course, he won’t be convicted, so these momentous doings are evacuated of content — save of course for the tiny detail that the emptiness of said process is a sure sign that the US system of government has internally collapsed.
Because Trump should be convicted. It’s an open-and-shut case.
The linking of aid to Ukraine with its investigation of Trump’s potential rival Joe Biden (through his son, Hunter) is so brazen, and the White House’s obstruction so unconstitutional, that, well, this is exactly the sort of thing that impeachment articles were put into the constitution for.
The paradox of the US is that it survived after the War of Independence only by throwing out the idea of “freedom” it had fought for — 13 free states (slaves exempt) in weak confederation — and replacing it, five years after victory, with a president whose powers are as absolute as a European monarch of the era, and yet who embodies “the republic” in a God-like cult.
Impeachment was designed as the brake on that everyday exceptionality. Every indication shows that the original drafters thought that it would be more frequently used.
It’s little known that impeachment is built into the entire constitution: Supreme Court (and other) judges can be impeached, but rarely are.
By letting impeachment wither — and with no Westminster system capacity to legislatively sack — the democratic republic of the US has condemned itself to being a term-limited elected dictatorship, with some restraints on power.
The system was part-tested with Nixon and Watergate; Nixon’s resignation spared it the full challenge. That challenge is here now, and the country’s failing.
The consequences of that are momentous, and a direct consequence of the collapse of what remained of political-moral principle on the right.
The sleazy attempt to get dirt on Biden is just politics, but it involved the auctioning-off of foreign policy, with no regard for the real interests of the republic. If that isn’t abuse of power, what is?
The willingness of Republicans to do this is a measure of their abandonment of the politics of hegemony, for that of pseudo-insurgency, and, eventually, of coup and junta.
The attempt to control the whole terms of politics through an application of social conservatism and free-market liberalism (the right from 1979 to about 2014) — that’s gone.
Power and the maintenance of it is no longer being sought through the avenue of legitimacy, but simply through the exercise of it in an unintegrated fashion.
Power thus exposes itself as such — as economic nationalism, as steal-their-oil, as withdraw and reoccupy, as kill the bad guys, praise the badassness of other bad guys, gleefully trash all institutions.
The intentional by-product of that is to force the centre-left into running the joint — as said joint becomes more unequal, blighted and dysfunctional by the day.
Quite aside from internal party pressures, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had no “real” choice but to proceed with impeachment, given that the US Constitution is a residually progressive document.
To have made a politically strategic decision to let the Ukraine stuff pass, would have been to give precedent to unchecked presidential power.
The US, which has spent a century handing over Latin American government power to gangsters, would have effectively staged a coup against itself. What the politics of it will be, is to be seen.
But it will be — if conviction doesn’t occur — the politics of a failure of the republic, and play out from there.
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
― George Orwell, 1984
What’s the odds that Lindsey Graham and friends will ultimately opt for John McCain’s revenge. Pence nominally in charge but Pompeo running the show. Will it get to Pompeo v Hilary ? Strange times, you may yet come to miss DJT. Pelosi comes from a hard ass political family who ran Baltimore, she makes Margaret Thatcher look soft. This isn’t over until the Fat Lady sings. American constitutionalists may yet have a field day.
None I would think. The Republican party is a venal as its president.
So what’s in it for Pelosi ?
There has to be an endgame advantage or why go to all the trouble.
I’m quite a bit over the death jerks of the failing US system. How about some articles about the leader of the free world, liberty and justice and the west — Angela Merkel and Germany? Sure, it is smaller economically and militarily and not without problems from the fascist right, but at least there is some uplifting hope.
I find it hard to see what the Republican Party’s end-game is with their blind obsequience to Trump. At best (unless they can somehow take control of the courts and change the constitution) he can hold office for another five years. What then? There is no clear successor who can continue in his style – no clear replacement that has his peculiar mix of populism derived from long years of exposure as a supposed business entrepreneur together with a carefully crafted image built over many seasons of reality TV. In short, no one who can command the fanatical loyalty that he has been able to build within his ‘base’ that has enabled the Republicans to get away with their transgressions without the American people rising up in mass protest.
In the mean time, they have effectively dismantled US democracy. It was irretrievably broken when the White House refused to honour the subpoenas issued by the House. The US system of government relies on the three arms of government – the Executive, Congress and the courts – to act as checks on an untrammelled grab for power by any one arm. As soon as the House was exposed as basically a toothless tiger, American democracy died. I just don’t think that Americans have realised it yet.
I’m not sure of the implications for Australia. I can’t help wondering, though, if the contempt for political norms that Scotty from Marketing has recently displayed in his handling of the McKenzie affair has been fostered by the example set by his (U.S.) Republican soulmates.
Absolutely fostered by Trump.
And meanwhile the bumptious vacuity of Boris Johnson serves to beckon on people like Morrison to see how far they can go.
It is not just their democracy that has died – their Christianity is in tatters too.
Revealed as the self-serving charade it really is, God bless America indeed.
Keep fiddling Donald, your efforts to make America great again are a fantastic failure, the best ever failure..!!
“unless they can somehow take control of the courts”
Ah but they have, haven’t they? A Supreme Court majority, with the prospect of more appointments to come.
And the lower echelons, they have been an unremitting focus.
Limited terms were imposed after FDR, they can be removed for Trump.
What then? No clear successor? Ivanka, Don jr and Eric are keen. After them Barron.
Buttressing the whole thing, a base kept simmering by tweets and rallies (after he’s dead huge photos of DJT as back drops to one or more of the kids), plenty of private guns and body armor on the streets (as seen in Virginia) when a point needs to be made, sympathetic paramilitaries (border guards, white police). Eventually a subservient military – watch out for more interference in military decision-making (like the recent pardons), and then purges of senior ranks.
And what will it all be for? Vestigial tax rates and a narrowly defined ethno-centric nation. That will do the GOP, because by the time it has crept upon them, it will have to.
The majority of the GOP may not have such an end-game in mind, but that doesn’t mean it is not there, waiting to be played out. The full shebang doesn’t have to be in anyone’s mind, really. It is just what will inevitably happen when conditions are ripe and a Trump has twigged that the self-evident truths of democracy are beliefs, not laws of nature, and can be ignored. Such a person imagines that few others have had this “epiphany” – otherwise they too would have acted on it. Hence the admiration for dictators. “Geniuses” – all of them.
It is an old adage that democracy can only work if all players in the game follow the rules. The doctrine of separation of powers is where we will see this fail first. But, we have seen this already. Dutton (OK, the neoconservative LNP government) was found guilty of breaking the law by the High Court several years ago, relating to the incarceration of asylum seekers from memory. Instead of respecting the Judicial branch of government, I believe Dutton promptly changed the applicable legislation and backdated the enactment of the amended legislation to before the illegal acts occurred. You would not have found a better, more self-serving solution engineered by a bentcAueenskand Copper. Wait a sec…
Cynicism is understandable but I think the democrats ultimately had no choice but to uphold the constitution. Pelosi resisted as she was always fully aware that there is no political advantage- hence the speed with which they are proceeding-
Spot on on the last point I think.
Going to impeachment over some political wrangling with a country many Americans have never heard of and fewer could place on a map is a silly move. Americans are unusually ignorant about the rest of the world and tend to care less. While I agree that the quid pro quo Trump was attempting is likely illegal, many constituents will more likely think that this is how business and politics is done.
I still maintain the process is a dangerous high stakes strategy to send Trump bonkers and do something dumb that will kill his re election chances.
Trump sold out the Kurds – America’s key ally in the war against IS.
Trump was prepared to sell out the Ukraine, the key US ally in the region and a major bulwark against Russian expansion.
Given that the foundation of Australia’s security policy is our alliance with the U.S, do we really want the selling out of allies to become standard practice in US politics?
I think we should be supporting the impeachment process in any way we can.
Ah, the ol’ “Russian expansion” trope.
How about the US, UK et al facilitating ‘Ukraine’s Nazi revisionism’.
Strewth! Nearly forgot Canada!
As one respondent noted, on the release of Part 2 of the doco I mentioned earlier;
“I wish someone would do a similar expose of Canadian participation in the US/NATO Ukraine project, which is massive. Over a billion dollars in assistance has been spent. Canada has supported anti-Russian initiatives there from the beginning and is currently training Ukrainian troops, providing intelligence and weapons. Canadian Ukrainian policy is largely shared by all parliamentary parties and takes its marching orders from the large and powerful Ukrainian ultranationalist lobby, which includes the deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland. The head of the World Ukrainian Congress is a Canadian Paul Grod, who once advocated for Canada to recognize veterans of the SS Galizien, which were brought to Canada after WWII”
America always does what is in their interests at the time -so they do not sell anyone out. They did not come into World War 2 until Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, didn’t fall out with USSR until the USSR isn’t pay it’s bills for the US supplied materials in Work War 2 etc so if one knows their history – America doesn’t sell out anyone -it looks after itself decisively.
Didn’t come into WW1 until Germany – rather jokingly – threatened to hand Texas back to Mexico, if Mexico allied itself with the Kaiser.
A stupid response in a desperate attempt to score points. I was referring specifically to Trump’s actions and the potentially disastrous consequences for Australia if those actions become standard practice for American presidents in the future. Historical responses by the US to events of over half a century ago are irrelevant.