THE PUBLIC AND HARD CHOICES: TWO VIEWS

This post concerns process as much as any substantive topic. Hopefully, it provides insight into how the three of us think, evaluate, and conceptualize issues. It originated in thoughts

Henry expressed about the capacity of voters and the public for sorting out complex issues and making nuanced judgments. Today’s politics, about which we so often write, forces difficult choices. Many issues are far from simple and may implicate moral and ethical dilemmas juxtaposed against deeply held social and ideological positions. Operating in the public sphere today offers few easy moments. Often no good choices exist.

Henry’s Optimism

We live in different cities, so we frequently communicate by text, though we also confer regularly by telephone about the substance of our

writing. One of us sees an idea in the day’s news or runs across an intriguing thought in an article or book. We ask for each other’s reaction to this or that development in the impeachment saga, foreign affairs, sports, or an aspect of interpersonal or family relations.

One day recently, in a series of text messages, we considered the capacity of Americans for making fine distinctions between pieces of evidence in the impeachment inquiry. Henry expressed confidence a large part of the public can sort and sift through the evidence, making intelligent decisions about such things as which acts of President Trump constitute impeachable offenses and which don’t. We recognized the impeachment enterprise could require understanding the difference, for example, between criminal acts and those which, though technically not a crime, still might constitute an impeachable abuse of power.

The Dissenters Respond

Woodson and Rob disagreed. Their text messages asserted that many members of the American

electorate can’t regularly make those distinctions. Such individuals rely on and adopt slogans and spin generated by political leaders with an agenda. Woodson and Rob pointed out, for example, our recent experience with the Mueller Report. 

One reason the early spinning by Attorney General Bill Barr derailed the potential impact of Mueller’s Report was Barr’s focus on a narrow point he claimed the report determined – “no collusion,” a term that doesn’t exist in federal criminal law. Trump and his allies took Barr’s misleading claim that Mueller found “no collusion” and ran with it, creating a false narrative the report itself never overcame.

Relatively few Americans read the dense, technically worded 400 plus page report and only

a few more closely followed the reporting concerning Mueller’s work. Those who did one or the other realized summarizing Mueller’s conclusions about Trump’s 2016 election involvement with the Russians in one or two words wasn’t possible. 

Rob and Woodson argued the Mueller Report reaction and the response to other still-emerging details of Trump’s illegal or unconstitutional behavior demonstrated the limits of popular ability for sorting out difficult public policy issues. Indeed, one reason Trump’s phone call to Ukraine’s president tying U.S. military aid to a “favor” for him in digging up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden may have broken through with the public lies in its simplicity. Understanding a shakedown requires much less capacity for nuance than sifting through Mueller’s machinations about collusion and obstruction of justice.

Elitist?

Some may suggest the view Rob and Woodson

take smacks of elitism. You don’t trust THE PEOPLE, such observers might say. Mistrust of the general population goes back centuries in American public life. The reason for the electoral college? The framers weren’t sure voters could make informed decisions on who should occupy the White House. Instead of leaving the matter to popular will, as President Hillary Clinton discovered in 2016, they established a system they thought diminished the chance an ill-informed public could make an irrational presidential choice.  Oh, and don’t forget that until ratification in 1913 of the Seventeenth Amendment, state legislatures, not voters, elected members of the United States Senate. In short, mistrust of the public enjoys a glorious history in America and misgivings about the capacity ordinary citizens possess for sorting through complicated public policy issues doesn’t necessarily prove elitism.  

Saving Grace

Despite our disagreement about how much nuance Americans exhibit in the public policy sphere, we concurred on one thing: a thoughtful person can make a difference in public policy debate. American history is replete with examples of single individuals making distinctions about divisive issues that end up having a major impact on the body politic.

Take the example of Edmund G. Ross, an obscure Senator from Kansas, who cast the deciding vote preventing conviction and removal from office of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Johnson was a bad president, a racist who stopped much of

Abraham Lincoln’s bold plan for healing the nation after the Civil War. The charges against Johnson, for which the House of Representatives impeached him, stemmed from a petty fight over something called the Tenure of Office Act, aimed at keeping

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in office. The underlying issue had no real importance in American governance. Senator Ross’s vote, as chronicled in John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage, prevented an injustice.

                  

Senator Ross’s vote represents but a single instance in which one person made a difference and changed history. Americans may not always recognize the fine distinctions thoughtful public policy consideration and development require, but in the republic’s 243 years, we’ve gotten some things right.                     

TRUMP: TREASON? A CALL TO ACTION

The Responsibility of Patriots: Impeach, Vote Democrat in Mid-term, Take our country back!

We wrote recently about former State Secretary Madeleine Albright’s warning that facist rumblings around the world

threaten democracy.  We didn’t hesitate, and neither did the Secretary in her book Fascism: A Warning, to include President Donald Trump among those about whom we should have such concerns.  Things have only gotten worse since we shared the publication.  More reasons than ever exist for believing Trump existentially threatens democratic institutions in this country and the alliances the United States helped fashion that have kept the western democracies safe in the 70 plus years since the Second World War.

 

We need not detail Trump’s disgraceful performance in Helsinkiafter his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Others have said plenty.  As American patriots, the three of us view Trump’s actions there as beyond the pale.  We’ve seen enough to declare Trump a Kleptocrat, if not an outright fascist.  His behavior calls for a response from all responsible Americans.

CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

As lawyers, we know the dangers of hyperbole.  Lots of people say Trump represents a danger to democracy.  They point to his race baiting after Charlottesville, his disgraceful practice of separating infants and children from their parents at the border as part of a cruel immigration policy, his attacks on the Muslim religion, and his war on the media, Fox News exempted.  What’s different now is Trump’s willingness to bow to a foreign adversary while

disparaging and fighting with our allies – the countries that have stood with us and behind us throughout the post-war era.  No American should forget European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) came to our aid after September 11, 2001.

Yet, before he went to Finland and groveled next to Putin, there was Trump picking fights with Germany, Great Britain, and other NATO members.  He even audaciously labeled the European Union our “foe.”  Trump behaves as if he’d prefer helping Putin dissolve NATO, leaving the Russian President free to annex Eastern European states and perhaps even reconstitute the old Soviet Union, no doubt a goal of this ruthless ex-KGB agent.  Even if Putin can’t accomplish that, Trump has already helped him diminish the influence of the United States.  Some European countries say they can no longer depend on American leadership.

A TIME FOR ACTION: WHAT TO DO

As we’ve pointed out before in our blogs, the three of us don’t speak with one voice on many issues.  We are different people who, from time to time, express a variety of political positions and preferences.  Yes, we’re mostly Democrats, but we’re not the same kind of Democrat, and we don’t see every issue in partisan terms.  We think of ourselves as patriots and though we each live our patriotism differently, we put country before party.

Having said that, we acknowledge seeing only a partisan solution to the danger Donald Trump’s behavior poses to the country we love.  Ironically enough, in this circumstance, we take our cues from several Republicans.

Steve Schmidt ran John McCain’s 2008 Presidential campaign.  Schmidt has been,throughout his political career

a dedicated adherent to the Republican Party and the conservative movement.  He worked for George W. Bush and helped put two conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. Schmidt now, however, advocates a vote for Democratic candidates in this fall’s mid-term elections as the only way to undo the grave damage he sees Trump doing to America.  Schmidt, at least for the moment, has withdrawn from the Republican Party and sees voting Democratic as the proper response to Trump’s behavior.  Columnist George F. Will, another prominent Republican voice of long standing influence, echoed similar sentiments, urging independents and non-Trump Republicans to vote in a way that will “substantially reduce” the size of the Republican caucus in Congress.

Schmidt and Will see the same thing we do.  Democratic control of the House would open the possibility – even the probability – of impeachment proceedings against Trump.  We wrote about the mechanisms of impeachment in June 2017, noting that process can’t start without Democrats holding the levers of power.

Even if Congress doesn’t remove Trump from office (imagining the two-thirds vote in the Senate required for conviction remains difficult), an impeachment inquiry could reign in Trump’s behavior.  Because House Republicans have stood so strongly behind him, his behavior has gone unchecked.  Democrats who oppose him in Congress sometimes seem like they’re howling in the wind.  Trump hasn’t had to respond to subpoenas, release tax returns, or answer for financial and policy excesses.  With Democrats in control of even one house of Congress, things will change.  That howling may soon resemble a pack of hungry wolves on the trail of a wounded animal.

We think it possible, in fact, Special Counsel Robert Mueller already has much of his case against Trump made.  Mueller, a smart Washington operative, knows putting out his report now, with Republicans remaining in control of the House where impeachment must begin, means that report would 

likely get relegated to the trash can.  If Mueller believes he can’t indict a sitting President, making impeachment the only remedy for Trump’s crimes, Mueller may well have decided he’ll wait and present his report to a more receptive audience.  We can’t imagine a more receptive audience than a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives.  That’s our dream and Trump’s worst nightmare.  

That’s what we think. Tell us what you think.