Is There Another Way Out of This?
Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 22, 2019
Since Senate Republicans will never support removal of Donald Trump, you want to hope that somewhere in the Capitol, Republican leaders are gathering to talk about another way out.
The continuing testimony this week made for a tightening case that Trump abused the Oval Office to trade a White House meeting with Ukraine for release of military aid and an announced investigation of Joe Biden and son. It also underscored Republican efforts to throw anything in sight into the mix in a sometimes successful attempt to muddy the waters.
Overall, the testimony of Fiona Hill, formerly the White House adviser on Russia, and David Holmes, senior staffer in the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, helped to seal elements of the arguments that have been drawn out over two weeks from career professionals who have insisted on resisting political conclusions. As an example, these two were quite willing to say when there was mention of the word “Burisma,” as a requirement for meetings and aid, they understood that to mean “Bidens,” in contradiction to previous testifiers.
Much of the varying Republican defense has melted away through the hearings, though the staunchest voices have been effective in leaving the impression that they have been steamrolled as some kind of hearing victims and that there was no public acknowledgement by fact witnesses of conclusions placing specific confessions at Trump’s door. Meanwhile, Democrats have plodded step-by-step in building a mixed circumstantial and first-person witness-based legal case in public hearings that managed just enough drama to draw the required media attention.
Overall, there seems little doubt that there was a an organized, months-long campaign through the summer to September to get Ukrainians to play their role in announcing, if not actually launching or re-launching investigations that Trump wanted for partisan, political and personal reasons.
Advocates will want to argue the ins and outs of the details, but that’s not my purpose today. Let me just assert for the moment that Democrats have been persuasive about what happened, but not about winning over opponents.
What is Not Settled
What is not settled is whether Republicans in the House will allow the issue to result in actual impeachment — by the numbers, they can’t seem to stop it — and whether Senate Republicans actually will go through with an actual trial of the expected impeachment charges. At this moment, we can all agree that there is little to no chance that 20 Republican senators will stand up to pressure from Trump to vote for his removal from office. After all, key Republican senators went to the White House yesterday to learn how Trump would like to time and handle the trial, once it is ordered. Some impartial jury.
In the end, of course, this is not a criminal proceeding, it is a political event.
So, for a moment, let’s set aside our emotions and sense of outrage to look at it as such.
As a matter of law and procedure, Democratic leaders still much decide on whether they have enough material to bring credible charges and whether those charges should be limited to the Ukraine campaign or also include other matters, including the obstruction of justice counts from the Mueller Report. Still to be decided by the House Judiciary Committee are just what charges to bring.
As a matter of politics alone, one could argue that both sides already have gained strength for their opposing views.
However wounded, Team Trump has wreaked an unmeasurable amount of confidence in Joe Biden as a political foe merely be repeating daily on television that the behavior of Biden, too, should be examined multiple years after serving as vice president involved in Ukraine policy while his son, Hunter, was named to the board of an energy company in Ukraine that was thought to be corrupt. None of that has anything to do with what Trump’s activities, but Team Trump, in fact, has tarred Biden some. Since Biden seems to be sinking a bit in popularity on his own performance, it is impossible to separate out the effect of these hearings.
And Democrats clearly have boxed Trump into a corner labeled abuse of office or corrupt. While Trump’s central electoral base remains steady, there is plenty of political evidence through polling, recent regional elections and general media coverage that Trump has suffered in ways that will make reelection more difficult.
Meanwhile, we’re left with governmental detritus that may continue to plague us, including the ability of White House officials to simply ignore subpoenas, the ever-growing power of the presidency, the apparent Republican okay for international manipulation in American elections, and more. Mostly, we’re left wondering were it not for a whistleblower, would all of this plot have proved successful?
So, What’s Next?
The calculation for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and company is whether the damage is seen enough to endanger his majority. For sure, the impeachment issues are buoying Democratic campaigns to unseat Republican incumbents in Colorado, Maine, Arizona and North Carolina, enough to tip the majority. This will only worsen the more the impeachment discussion goes on, taking up all air in Washington and making clear that Trump is out only for himself.
So, I wonder whether back rooms in the Capitol are abuzz with talk of forcing Trump to acknowledge abridgment of some kind of line of responsible behavior short of impeachment. There is a process called censure — the path for Bill Clinton — in which the president admits bad behavior, but continues in office under reprimand that has no other legal teeth.
Settling on censure rather than impeachment would mean serious compromise. Democrats are hellbent to use this case for removal of a guy who disdains law and the U.S. Constitution, who believes he can do anything he wants, law notwithstanding, and needs to be stopped on route to more actions tantamount to an authoritarian society.
Republicans do not want to admit to any wrongdoing, of course, but seem to believe seriously that the president has much wider authority to act than we have even understood. But there is a growing discomfort that the president went too far, even if impeachment and removal are inappropriate.
Thus, the compromise could be an agreement on censure, a kind of plea of no contest, acceptance that there are limits on the law, but allowing Trump to finish his term and run for re-election.
The only person who will not accept this compromise out, of course, is Trump himself. His ego, his narcissism, his world view will not allow him to do so. In the end, it will be a balancing act forced by Senate Republicans who can demand his resignation, hold the trial and take responsibility for an even more-deeply split nation resulting.
Most compromise comes about because of recognition of self-interest. The hearings show that Republicans will be under pressure to decide what exactly their self-interest is.
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