THE HEARINGS: IN PRAISE OF OUR CONSTITUTION

America got a civics lesson last week as three patriots testified before the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment probe into President Donald J. Trump. There, before the television cameras, the country saw how the Constitution was designed to work.  Whatever flaws the    230

year-old document had at its inception and, for that matter, still has, the nation got a tutorial in what’s right about it. Americans could say at week’s end maybe things haven’t gone to hell in a handbasket after all.  Maybe the system of checks and balances works.

State Department official George Kent, the

Kent, Taylor, and Yovanovitch preparing to testify at  Trump impeachment hearing

current U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor, and former  Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch told much the same story in their riveting testimony. Trump held up U.S. military aid in an attempt to bribe Ukraine's president into announcing an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and a discredited conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election. Only the most partisan Trump backers now contend the President didn’t engage in attempted bribery.   

The Scene

When Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Cal) convened the hearings Wednesday, the

impeachment inquiry moved into a new phase. Committee members knew what the witnesses would say because those witnesses had given sworn testimony in closed-door depositions. Now, it was showtime, so the American people could see what the investigators had found.

The hearings aimed at the key audiences in this saga. A vote in the House impeaching Trump now seems a foregone conclusion. Whether he stays or goes, therefore, depends on potentially persuadable Republican senators who might support ousting Trump and swing voters (the 15-25% of the country that doesn’t have its mind made up) whose support for conviction might produce those Republican votes in the Senate.

The Witnesses

Kent and Taylor, men with long histories of unflappable, professional

government service in administrations headed by both Democrats and Republicans demonstrated personal appeal and exhaustive knowledge of the subject at issue and of their Ukraine jobs. Both challenged Trump's credibility in

ways that arguably overcame the inherent power of his office. Both eschewed politics, making Republicans look small in trying to paint them as partisan hacks.

It was Yovanovitch who, thanks in part to an insane blunder by Trump, ended the first round of hearings as a star.  When she left the hearing room Friday after, the crowd erupted in spontaneous applause, sending chills down the spines of Americans across the nation. During her testimony, Trump attacked Yovanovitch

in a mean-spirited Tweet, blaming her for unrest in Somalia, one of the early stops in her 33-year career as a foreign service officer. Schiff read her the Tweet and she acknowledged she found it “very intimidating.”

 

Schiff told her some members of Congress "take witness intimidation very, very seriously," a hint an

article of impeachment might well include that charge. Commentators and legal observers noted that a specific provision of the United States Code forbids witness intimidation. Not long after

Trump’s Tweet, a federal jury convicted long time Trump associate Roger Stone of witness tampering and six other felonies carrying a potential prison sentence totaling fifty years.

If the testimony of Kent, Taylor, and Yovanovitch wasn’t enough, a development late Friday made things even worse for Trump and his allies. When Taylor testified Wednesday, he revealed he’d just learned that a member of his embassy staff overheard Trump on a phone call with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland talking about seeking an investigation into Biden and the 2016 election allegations.  Taylor hadn’t known of the call when he gave his deposition.

        

The staff member surfaced Friday night, appearing for his own deposition and offering an opening statement describing the call he overheard. David Holmes’s account of the call torpedoed one Republican defense – that witnesses like Taylor, Kent, and Yovanovitch had only provided “hearsay,” since they hadn’t actually heard Trump seeking the investigations. 

The Genius of Our Constitution

We will in the future say more about the meaning of the constitution and its role in this impeachment exercise. Suffice it to say now that what we've seen demonstrates the hope and the cynicism embedded in the document.  Donald Trump is being held to account because the framers set up a system that recognized the difficulty in dealing with a corrupt, lawless leader. The past week demonstrates that as perhaps never before. 

 

The hope in the constitution lies in the fact it contains the tools for dealing with someone like Trump. Congress checks the executive branch through institutional mechanisms like the power of the purse, the oversight function, and, ultimately, impeachment. Though Trump has tried frustrating the process by preventing his lieutenants from testifying, career public servants in the executive branch like Kent,

Taylor and Yovanovitch defied him and testified anyway.  The framers no doubt understood personal courage would come into play a some point. If Trump wins re-election, we wonder if he will push these brave men and women out of public service and replace them with enablers willing to do his bidding.

There is more. Bad actors sometimes require a cynical approach, meaning the courts and criminal prosecution have their roles, as the Roger Stone verdict demonstrates.  Where would the Watergate-based impeachment of Richard Nixon have been without the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in the Nixon v. United States tapes case? 

 

Our constitution wasn’t and isn’t perfect. This isn't the place for expounding on the

evil of the three-fifths compromise and other flaws. We can get to them later.  This is the place, however, for pointing out that what

we saw last week shows why this nation has survived as long as it has and maybe why we’ll survive the calamity of the Trump presidency.   

GENDER AND 2020 REVISITED: THREE MEN, ONE WOMAN REMAINING

One of a group of three men and one woman will likely win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Former Vice  

President Joe Biden, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren maintain the leads they’ve held for months in national and state polls. South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg surged recently in Iowa, so we’re including him. We know late runs happen, like John Kerry’s in 2004 when he came from far behind, won Iowa and rolled to the nomination.  Something

unexpected could occur, but a betting person would pick Biden, Sanders, Warren, or Buttigieg.

Note that only one woman, Warren, retains much of a chance at getting nominated, despite the fact six women entered the race. We pointed out their presence in a February 2019 post on the possibility the United States in 2020 might finally elect a woman president or vice president.  The vice presidency remains in play, but Warren now seems the only realistic possibility for a female president. So, what’s happened with the other women candidates? 

The Hillary Effect

We recognize perhaps Americans “aren’t ready” for a woman president, a quaint notion in 2019, but worth discussing until the country

elects a woman. In February, we cited generic polling suggesting five percent of the electorate won’t ever vote for a woman. We questioned that, noting pollsters asked the question in the abstract, eliminating nuances and quirks of individual candidates and races. 

No one can say if that five percent, or whatever number of never-a-woman voters live out there, doomed 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Because of Clinton’s loss, some Democrats believe the party shouldn't nominate a woman in 2020. Clinton exhibited definite weakness with male voters, losing 52-41 (62-32 among white men). She won the overall women’s vote, 52-41, because black and Hispanic women gave her 98% and 67% of their votes respectively. White women supported Donald Trump, 47-45, despite his bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.

Hillary Clinton carried lots of baggage, from anger over Wall Street speeches to suspicions about her role in the Clinton Foundation to the e-mail saga. How much each of those things, and the actions of former FBI Director James Comey, played in the outcome no one can say. Clinton won the popular vote, 48-46, but gender could have cost her the election. 

A Story with Every Candidate

A football coach we know often says there’s a story with every recruit he gets close on but doesn’t sign. So, is there a story, beyond gender, with every female 2020 candidate who won’t get nominated? Take New York Senator Kirstin Gillibrand, who began with a  big war chest and bright prospects, but went nowhere. Was it gender?  Or, did resentment in Democratic circles over her aggressive role in forcing Minnesota’s Al Franken out of the U.S. Senate on sexual harassment charges

torpedo her campaign?  Or was it her high-pitched voice that sometimes made her sound like former Vermont Governor Howard Dean in his 2004 scream?

California Senator Kamala Harris remains in the race but has faded since a summer high generated by her calculated first debate attack on Biden. As we’ve wondered, has her sometimes snarky verbal style worn thing? Does her history as a prosecutor who put many black people in jail keep her from catching on with black voters?

Spiritualist author Mary Ann Williamson got laughs and had a few good applause lines in the early debates, but never was a serious candidate. Obscure Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard always was a long shot and her campaign now seems on its last leg.  Are there people on the mainland who don’t fully grasp Hawaii’s status as a state?  

 

We find harder explaining what’s happened with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. She too remains in the race and has qualified for the December debate. Her last debate performance generated an infusion of cash 

and excellent press. Still, she lags in the polls and hasn’t broken through in Iowa, the state next door to her Minnesota home base and a place where her reach-out-to-the-other side history should play well among centrist Democrats.

 

We wonder if Klobuchar ever really recovered from early stories alleging she mistreated her staff. That returns us to whether women receive different scrutiny in politics than men. Would a male candidate accused of bad behavior toward his staff get roasted the way Klobuchar did? Might instead he get credit for toughness and efficiency?

It’s possible the reaction to Klobuchar’s alleged bad acts demonstrates a fundamental

truth about American politics. At the highest levels, women don’t do as well in seeking executive offices as they do in running for legislative seats. While 25 women serve in the U.S. Senate, only nine currently hold governorships. Maybe Americans now accept women as legislators since, in Congress, a woman doesn’t run anything except her own office (with apologies to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi). When women “crack the whip” as executives, perhaps people recoil.

                                            

What About Warren?

The difficulty 2020 women candidates have had naturally makes us ask why Warren has done so well. Her detailed policy proposals and a disciplined campaign

that has never gotten distracted from its message offer possible explanations. Her age-defying energy on the stump hasn’t hurt. Maybe it’s no more than what one CNN commentator observed after the second debate – as a campaigner, she’s just the best athlete on the field, regardless of gender. In spite of all that works

against female candidates in 2020, her unique qualities might mean the country finally break the glass ceiling and puts a person with two X chromosomes in the oval office.        

IMPEACHMENT: IT’S THE REAL DEAL NOW

Impeaching President Donald J. Trump now seems inevitable.  On a party-line vote, the House of Representatives last week endorsed a resolution opening a formal impeachment inquiry. The vote never would have

been taken if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn't confident she has the votes for impeachment. Soon public hearings will begin, followed by approval of at least one article of impeachment in the judiciary committee. If the full House supports

at least one article, action would shift to the Senate for a trial. There, conviction and removal from office require a two-thirds vote, admittedly an unlikely prospect now.   

Mounting evidence Trump abused his office by withholding aid from a beleaguered ally while demanding help from that foreign government in digging up dirt on a political opponent has persuaded about half the country Congress should remove him. Though

Trump’s sins as described in the report of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller didn’t produce widespread support for impeachment, shake-down of a foreign leader for personal domestic political advantage appears to have broken through.

The story isn’t complicated. A White House  summary of a call between Trump and the Ukrainian president

told most people all they needed to know. When House investigators began taking testimony from people involved in U.S. – Ukrainian relations the doubts about Trump’s constitutionally prohibited behavior fell away.  A host of credible witnesses, like Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor and a decorated National Security Council official, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, have given the Ukraine scandal gravitas and staying power with the public. House leaders, like intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, indicate Taylor, Lt. Col. Vindman, and perhaps even former National Security Advisor John Bolton may testify in the public hearing phase. History suggests increasing public support for impeachment would likely result from public hearings.

Our Say

We return to impeachment now because it’s real. In four previous posts we looked at it under abstract circumstances. This isn’t hypothetical anymore. This will happen.

We began writing about impeaching Trump in March 2017, just two months into his presidency. Early signs of corruption  produced Woodson’s prediction that impeachment proceedings against the President would begin “in the next year.”  It took a little longer, but even then the road pointed in the direction we’re now headed.

                   

Three months later, in June 2017, Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey induced from us a piece on the history of the Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton impeachment proceedings. We speculated about what might happen politically if Trump were impeached and removed. As things move forward in 2019, we realize we’ll have to revisit the political calculus.  It’s different now that we’re on the cusp of an election, but no less important in developing an understanding of what all this means for American politics.

In July 2018, we briefly revisited impeachment in the wake of Trump’s shameful performance in Helsinki alongside Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. With former State Secretary Madeleine Albright’s

book Fascism as a backdrop and organizing principle, we asked if impeachment “could reign in Trump’s behavior,” even if the Senate didn’t remove him from office.

Finally, in April 2019, evidence of Trump’s scandalous behavior became clearer and clearer. We learned of so many sins, we asked, “Impeachment Anyone?” We addressed the issue in terms of political reality versus the country’s need for a moral response, in the process revealing our own varied views on the issue.

Ukraine Changes the Game

Throughout the now nearly three years of the Trump presidency, as the specter of impeachment lurked beneath the surface and the bad acts piled up, there has always been the idea of relying on the 2020 election as the best way of ridding the nation of Trump disease. Wait, counseled people like Rob, who for most of that time, thought the political price of impeaching Trump wasn’t worth it. We could tough it out until the election in the belief limiting Trump to one term wouldn’t permanently damage the country. Trump’s behavior in connection with Ukraine calls the morality of that view into serious question.

Woodson and Henry now offer compelling

observations about why leaving it to the election isn’t a good idea. Woodson notes the possibility of tampering with the 2020 election. Mueller told Congress he was sure the Russians were, as he spoke, readying their next attack. Trump, by saying he’d welcome dirt on his opponent from foreign sources, invited just such interference. It happened in 2016. It could happen again.   

Henry, a former federal magistrate judge who says perhaps the best part of his job was swearing in new citizens, reminds us morality commands we not betray the brave citizens like Ambassador Taylor, Lt. Col. Vindman, and the original

whistleblower who stepped forward and told what they knew, sometimes at great personal cost. Trump and his allies vilified these men and women for doing nothing more than honoring their duty under the constitution.

 

All three of us learned in law school the venerable principle that the law is entitled to every person’s evidence. People like

Ambassador Taylor and Lt. Col. Vindman followed that principle with their closed-door testimony and probably will again when the hearings go public. In the absence of impeaching Trump, we will have done those individuals and the principle they followed a great disservice. We cannot afford the price of doing that.