Ironies and Analogies on Impeachment

I’m wondering whether what I’m about to write about will be moot by the time we get through the day and I get this posted. Still, I’m going to comment—on the impeachment, and then on Nancy Pelosi’s threat not to pass the articles of impeachment along to the Senate.

President Trump at rally while House votes to impeach
screenshot from here

Yesterday, for the third time in history, the House voted to impeach a US President. For the first time in history, the House voted to impeach a president without there being an underlying crime that the president may have committed.

What happened the other two times?

There were 11 articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson in 1868, but the main charge had to do with the violation of the Tenure of Office Act—a bill he had vetoed, but that the legislature had overruled. It was designed to protect a particular Secretary of War. Andrew Johnson dismissed the man and replaced him anyway. This was during the contentious post-Civil War era, when, granted, there was a lot of division. Add to that, Johnson had come to office replacing Lincoln, after the assassination, and was of the opposite party of Lincoln. Lincoln had chosen him to help bring people together. But it’s hard to imagine that sort of setup today—mainly because you’d need to worry about assassination. Not that Johnson had anything to do with that, but you can see the motive.

By the way, Johnson was not removed from office by the Senate.

According to the Wikipedia article on that impeachment, here’s the takeaway: 

The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson had important political implications for the balance of federal legislative–executive power. It maintained the principle that Congress should not remove the president from office simply because its members disagreed with him over policy, style, and administration of the office.

A hundred and thirty years later, there were two articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton: lying under oath and obstruction of justice. This was the case in which several women had accused him of sexual assault, and he lied under oath in a court of law. Somewhere during his testimony in that trial was when he famously equivocated by saying, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is.” He also lied directly to the American people about his affair, in the White House, with intern Monica Lewinsky, saying, “I did not have sex with that woman,” which of course semen stains on the blue dress he had given her proved was a lie. He did both the literal crimes and the heinous acts. For lying under oath, he lost his law license. Still, the Senate did not vote to remove him from office, reframing the lying and abuse of power as, his sex life is his private business and has nothing to do with running the country.

The takeaway is that, if the Senate wants their president to stay, there’s almost no limit to the wrongdoings they will justify for him.

The other time there was almost an impeachment was with Richard Nixon, in the 1970s, who stepped down rather than put the country through the ordeal of an impeachment. There was a break-in at the Watergate Hotel, into Democrat Party headquarters. The thieves were caught. It turned out they had been hired by members of the president’s re-election campaign. The president had been unaware, and not approving of any such break-in, but he did participate in the coverup in order to distance his campaign from the crime. That didn’t work out so well. That was in fact obstruction of justice, and it’s likely he would have been both impeached and removed.

Ironically, the Nixon re-election campaign was doing well without the information the crooks were trying to obtain. Add to that, if Nixon had told the truth, that he didn’t know about the scheme, and if he had then disavowed anyone involved, he’d have probably survived the scandal. Truth is better.

There are a couple of things that make this current impeachment historic. First is that there is no underlying crime that the president has committed; it is a purely partisan political maneuver.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, following impeachment vote
screenshot from here

Second, the articles of impeachment have been voted on; the impeachment has happened. Except that the Speaker of the House is hesitating to pass the articles of impeachment along to the Senate. She’s insisting that the Senate run their hearing on whether to remove the president from office based on Democrat-led House demands. She wants the Senate to go by the House’s rules. She’s saying, “Unless you do as I say, I’m not giving you the articles of impeachment.” (That’s a summary, not a verbatim quote, of course.)

This is odd in so many ways. Let’s try a couple of analogies to clarify.

I follow a lot of bills when the Texas legislature is in session, as it was this past January to June. I keep a list, and update whenever there’s been movement. Every bill goes through several stages, but the simplest version is, it goes through the originating body, House or Senate, and when that body passes it, it goes on to the other body. If it passes there, but with amendments, it goes back to the first body for reconciliation. And finally, if passed by both chambers, it is sent on to the governor for signature or veto.

So, it’s a significant movement when the bill passes in, say, the House and gets sent to the Senate. I tend to think of this passing from one body to the other as automatic. But sometimes it takes a day, or maybe even two, for the bill to actually appear in the Senate to be dealt with. But it never fails that the bill does get sent.

There is no possibility that a bill gets passed in the House and doesn’t get sent on to the Senate. The House is required to send it on. And it would be both a pointless and unlawful betrayal of the House and the people the House represents to take their votes and pocket them. If it were up to any individual member of the House to “table” the bill following a lawful vote, wouldn’t such an individual be tempted to do that any time it suited him or her? It. Can’t. Happen.

Yet that is what Nancy Pelosi is doing. All of the representatives are now on record for whether they think the president should be removed from office; for some, that is a political risk, because they’re in districts that elected this president. But she doesn’t care; she’ll just withhold the articles, because she wants to use them as leverage.

Except, that’s not really how leverage works. As Senator Ted Cruz, an actual constitutional scholar, puts it,

Her threat to the Senate is, “Do exactly what I want or I’m not going to impeach the president; I’m not going to send over the impeachment articles.” My attitude is, OK, throw us in that brier patch. Don’t send them. That’s all right. We actually have work to do. 

Yeah, pretending they didn’t impeach the President makes Republicans chuckle, not shake in their boots.

One more analogy. Let’s say there’s been suspicion of a crime. Between the investigating officers and the district attorney’s office, there is a case built. Say the prosecutor announces, “We’re pressing the following charges—” and then lists them. But then he doesn’t actually file the charges. The accusation is out there in the media, possibly hanging over the accused, but it doesn’t go to court. It’s nothing but words.

That is similar to what Nancy Pelosi is doing. She is announcing the pressing of charges, but she is not presenting any of the charges to the court. As far as the court is concerned, then, there are no charges. Until they are delivered to the Senate, there can be no impeachment trial.

Each body of the legislature is entitled to set up its own rules. What incentive is there for the Senate to bow to this demanding Democrat-led House to conduct their business against their own interests?

Nancy Pelosi has no power to do what she’s attempting to do. No right to do it. And no rationale for doing it.

Nancy Pelosi is trying to usurp power—that is, take power that has not been granted to her. That is an abuse of power—what the House has accused the president of without showing he has actually abused his power. She is literally abusing power and obstructing Congress.

So many ironies. Let’s add one more.

Another option for the House would have been to censure the President. This would have held no legal standing, but it would have sent the message, “We don’t like what you said in that July phonecall, because it could be misinterpreted, so we censure you for not being more careful with your speech when officially representing our nation.” It’s possible that there would have been no Democrat defectors for that (there were two nays joining all the Republicans, plus one abstention, in yesterday’s vote), and maybe even a Republican or two would have been willing to send that message. This would not have required passing anything along to the Senate, where there is virtually zero chance of the President being removed from office.

It would have saved face without any betrayal of House members. It would have been essentially the same outcome as voting to impeach but then not delivering the articles of impeachment—without any embarrassing lawbreaking on Pelosi’s part.

My guess is that this wasn’t done because the radical base of the Democrat party has insisted on impeaching the President since before his inauguration.

It’s inconceivable, simply because of its lawlessness, that this holdout will continue. I expect Pelosi will give in, with some sort of speech about how much she cares about the Constitution—more irony—and eventually deliver the articles of impeachment. We’ll see.

But one thing to consider is, if the Democrats are accusing someone of some wrongdoing, it is highly probable that they are committing that very wrongdoing. I’d sure like to see the truth laid bare for the world to see on every one of their collusions, quid pro quos, obstructions, and lies.

One more analogy. We recently used a pressure washer to clean the bathroom tile, and got rid of twenty years of ground in grime, hairspray, and whatnot. It's like new again. Our government could use a good pressure washing like that. Then we could get back to thriving with greater freedom, prosperity, and civilization.