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WASHINGTON — And so it begins. Our trial as a people.
The question before us is whether we can get past our animosities and social and political divisions to handle the upcoming clash over Donald Trump’s actions and save our institutions.
Somebody noted that the Mueller investigation was about foreign interference in our 2016 presidential election, while the new Ukraine investigation is about foreign interference in the upcoming 2020 election.
Sounds simple; it’s not because we no longer agree on what facts are. What is one lawmaker’s unconstitutional demand by a president that a foreign leader become involved in our domestic politics is another lawmaker’s innocent request by a president for a favor from a foreign leader in return for $391 million worth of anti-tank military weapons.
To half the country, Trump’s conversation with Ukraine’s president asking him to investigate Joe Biden’s son’s business activities in Ukraine before Trump would release money Congress appropriated for Ukraine is a clear abuse of power. They argue it is a matter of national honor and preservation of U.S. democracy to hold the president accountable.
But to the other half, it is another effort to turn the country against a president whom they love. To them, Trump’s clearly troubling conversation with Ukraine’s president — the White House released notes about Trump’s call with the Ukraine president showing Trump offered Ukraine the help of the U.S. attorney general to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden— is just how Trump rolls. They understand that Trump would do anything to be re-elected and to them that is a good thing.
What is clear is that we are going to have one of the ugliest, most bitter confrontations in our nation’s tumultuous history.
If after six House committees hold investigations of Trump, the House does decide to vote to undertake a vote to impeach Trump, the vote will be close but will proceed along party lines. The House will vote to impeach. (The House has 235 Democrats, 198 Republicans, one independent and one Republican vacancy.)
After a House vote to impeach, the matter goes to the Senate for a trial, presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Since Republicans control the Senate, (there are 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who vote with Democrats) and because it takes 67 votes to convict, it is likely Trump will not be convicted and will remain in office. Two presidents (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) have been impeached; no president has ever been removed from office by a Senate vote. Richard Nixon was urged to resign by Republicans who told him he would lose an impeachment vote.
Meanwhile, Trump is in full fightback mode, complaining to everyone he sees about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to unleash the forces of impeachment against him. At the annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, other leaders sat by expressionless while Trump vented his rage against Pelosi and House Democrats.
Democrats are worried that the public is not on board with a full impeachment investigation of Trump and may take it out on them in the elections of 2019. But Democratic hardliners are arguing that the Constitution means nothing if the president can thwart it and pay no penalty. They hope to convince the public over the next few months that impeachment proceedings are necessary.
Republicans say that even though Trump’s telephone call with Ukraine’s president is obviously troubling, asking another country to investigate a political rival does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who pursued impeachment proceedings against Clinton, said of this case: “From my point of view, to impeach any president over a phone call like this would be insane.” He then tweeted “Democrats have lost their minds when it comes to (Trump).”
Whatever the ultimate outcome, it is not likely much regular business will get done in Congress while impeachment fever afflicts the nation’s capital.
We have to hope that at the end of this long, bumpy road we now all have to tread, historians will not say, “and this is how the path to the end of democracy began.”
Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service. Readers may send her email at [email protected].