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.

The Recycled Forward Speech

Last Thursday seems so long ago, the Obama acceptance speech has already become irrelevant. But in the interest of completing what I set out to do, this is Part II of commentary on the speech. [Part I here.]

Some of the coming sentences are simply false. Some are painfully ironic.

“I've cut taxes for those who need it.” Taxes are down for those who paid very little to none; 50% of earners pay no taxes, and many of those nonpayers actually receive tax credits. Does this redistribution create wealth? No, none. But he remains willing to nearly double capital gains taxes, even if doing so brings even less revenue to government, because taking from the rich (as he defines anyone making $250,000 a year who has been investing post-tax money as capital) is “fair.” Hmm.

“Now, I won't pretend the path I'm offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn't elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth.” Actually, he indicated that economic recovery was doable, and quickly: “If I don’t have this done in three years, we’re looking at a one-term proposition.” That statement wasn’t from the speech; that was from an interview with Matt Lauer, February 1, 2009, a couple of weeks after the inauguration, where he’s predicting real progress within a year and says he’s glad he’ll be held accountable. OK, then.

“The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place.” Definitions are so useful when communicating. Does he mean the path to prosperity, which he hopes you believe? Or does he, in his mind, mean the path to government controlled economy, which he sees as “a better place,” even though most Americans, who are not happy to be takers for nothing nor as providers of slave labor for nonproducers, would not see it as better? They would rather have job opportunities instead of unpaid-for government largesse.

“I'm asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country, goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security and the deficit, real, achievable plans that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation.” What set of goals, exactly? None mentioned, so you go ahead and fill in the blank.

“We reinvented a dying auto industry that's back on the top of the world.” Except that the parts of the auto industry that are doing worst are the ones Obama chose to take over and subsidize, as well as those that would have been competitive if Obama hadn’t bet against them, using taxpayer dollars.

“And after a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last 2 1/2 years.” This seems arbitrary, as stats go. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 582,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since Obama took office, a little more in loss than the gain he claims.

“In the last year alone, we cut oil imports by 1 million barrels a day, more than any administration in recent history. And today the United States of America is less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in the last two decades.” Any increase in domestic production is mainly due to boom going on in North Dakota—on private land, so Obama had no power to stop it. He shut down production in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, and sent huge amounts of tax money to help Brazil drill off their coast. No one related to the industry actually believes Obama deserves credit for anything positive about oil production.

“So long as I'm commander in chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known.” His “plan” includes cutting $1 Trillion from the military. To make it the strongest ever. How? Obama isn’t what we’d call good at math, so maybe we shouldn’t trust him on this one.

“My plan would cut our deficit by $4 trillion.” Didn’t he say this before? And the result was not halving the deficit, but more or less doubling it? Not that such a budget is anything but air, because we can trust Obama’s Democrat-controlled Senate to continue to pass no budget at all.

photo found here

Nothing amused me so much as a side-by-side comparison, provided on Rush Limbaugh’s Friday show, with Jimmy Carter’s 1980 acceptance speech. One would think they used the same speechwriter, if it weren’t for the 32-year time difference. And then team Obama has the temerity to choose the word “forward” as their campaign mantra.

Here are a few samples:

The Choice between Two Futures:

OBAMA: The choice you face won't just be between two candidates or two parties. It will be a choice between two different paths for America, a choice between two fundamentally different visions for the future.

CARTER 1980: This election is a stark choice between two men, two parties, two sharply different pictures of what America is and what the world is, but it's more than that. It's a choice between two futures.

Being President Is Hard:

OBAMA: Times have changed, and so have I. I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the president. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle. For I've held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return. I've shared the pain of families who lost their homes and the frustration of workers who've lost their jobs. While I'm very proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, "I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go."

CARTER 1980: Let me talk for a moment about what that job is like and what I've learned from it. I've learned that only the most complex and difficult task comes before me in the Oval Office. No easy answers are found there, because no easy questions come there. I've learned that for a president, experience is the best guide to the right decisions. I'm wiser tonight than I was four years ago. And I have learned that the presidency is a place of compassion. My own heart is burdened for the troubled Americans, the poor and the jobless and the afflicted. They've become part of me.

I’ve Finally Got Energy Figured Out:

OBAMA: You can choose the path where we control more of our own energy. After 30 years of inaction, we raised fuel standards so that by the middle of the next decade, cars and trucks will go twice as far on a gallon of gas. We have doubled our use of renewable energy, and thousands of Americans have jobs today building wind turbines and long-lasting batteries. In the last year alone, we cut oil imports by 1 million barrels a day, more than any administration in recent history. And today the United States of America is less dependent on foreign oil than at any time in the last two decades.

So now you have a choice between a strategy that reverses this progress or one that builds on it.

We've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration in the last three years, and we'll open more. But unlike my opponent, I will not let oil companies write this country's energy plan or endanger our coastlines or collect another $4 billion in corporate welfare from our taxpayers. We're offering a better path.

We're offering a better path where we—a future where we keep investing in wind and solar and clean coal, where farmers and scientists harness new biofuels to power our cars and trucks, where construction workers build homes and factories that waste less energy, where—where we develop a hundred-year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet. If you choose this path, we can cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone.

CARTER 1980: The battle to secure America's energy future has been fully and finally joined. Americans have cooperated with dramatic results. We've reversed decades of dangerous and growing dependence on foreign oil. We are now importing 20 percent less oil. That is one-and-a-half million barrels of oil every day less than the day I took office. This is what they propose: to destroy the windfall profits tax and to unleash the oil companies and let them solve the energy problem for us.

Maybe it’s just coincidence, or circumstance; maybe there’s nothing else that can be said to ask for four more years of a failed presidency.

Let’s hope, for the sake of our nation’s future, that Obama is exactly as effective with these words as Carter was.