Impeachment: Start With the Minions

At a time when they should unite in opposition to the President and his policies, Congressional Democrats appear divided over the fraught question of whether now is the time to begin impeachment proceedings against him.

I am one who believes that the President has been impeachable from the earliest days of this Administration.  Almost from the time he assumed office, Mr. Trump has repeatedly violated his Constitutional oath "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States".  Oath-breaking of that nature is surely all any Congress should need to proceed against a President.

That said, it seems clear that - despite twenty-seven months' proof of the President's manifest unfitness for office - Congress hesitates.  The Republican Party, united in defense of the indefensible, seems determined to obstruct any impeachment process.  Democrats, concerned about the 2020 elections, are divided on strategic grounds.

Herewith, a modest proposal:  Once they have finished reading the Mueller Report (as redacted), Democratic Senators and Congressmen/women should read up on history of England in the seventeenth century - with particular reference to the impeachment of Archbishop Laud and the bill of attainder against the first Earl of Strafford.

There is, as always, a great deal to be learned from the study of History.

In this case, a majority of the English House of Commons confronted, in King Charles I, an autocrat determined to govern without due respect for the legislative and fiscal powers of Parliament.  Yet, despite his high-handed manner, King Charles retained a great deal of popular support.  He was, after all, King, by the Grace of God.

Rather than throwing up their hands and letting King Charles continue in his high-handed career, the majority of the House of Commons went after his two chief advisors.  Archbishop Laud was impeached, imprisoned and, a few years later, beheaded.  Strafford was attainted, imprisoned in the Tower, and promptly beheaded.

Deprived of his chief advisors, King Charles was dramatically weakened.  A year later, pushed to the limit, he made the fatal mistake of raising an army and taking up arms against Parliament.  The English Civil War began, and Charles' ultimate defeat on the battlefield ended his reign, and his life.

In these less sanguinary times, it's hard to imagine that anyone would seriously advocate beheading members of the Trump Administration, much less the President - and a civil war would be almost inconceivable.  But the strategy pursued by Parliament when King Charles attempted to govern as an autocrat deserves consideration.

It's not really surprising the Congressional Democrats seem unable to unite behind a direct effort to impeach the President.  After all, he retains the support of a significant part of the population and the stubborn adherence of Republican legislators who - however much they loathe him in private - fear losing their seats should they incur the wrath of his followers.

But, while that wrath would undoubtedly reach fever pitch should Congress seek to impeach the President, it's far less certain that violent passions would be roused if the House began impeachment proceedings against, say, Attorney General Barr, or Stephen Miller, or Sarah Sanders.

Yet these three - and others - are certainly impeachable.

In his bizarre mismanagement of the release of the Mueller Report, Attorney General Barr has been guilty of working entirely on behalf of the President, rather than on behalf of the American people.

Stephen Miller, perhaps the most personally loathsome member of the Administration - his chief always excepted - has consistently advised his irreflective and constitutionally-illiterate boss to pursue illegal and unconstitutional measures.

Sarah Sanders has admitted, under oath, to lying to the American people in order to justify the actions of her boss.

Impeachment proceedings against any or all of these individuals would be fully justified.  There's even a chance the Senate might vote to convict one or more of them.  After all, most Republican legislators secretly despise the President and his team.  And it's unlikely the President's base would be howling for blood if Republican Senators voted to condemn the ghoulish Miller, or the embarrassingly inept Sanders.

Barr, to be sure, might be another story.  He would have his defenders.  But Barr, as an old Washington hand with a respectable record of public service, has already shown himself to be uncomfortable when pressed by Congress to explain his conduct.  It's a fair bet that, if actually impeached, he would fold up like a cheap tent and resign, hoping thereby to preserve some scrap of his reputation.

Moreover, impeachment proceedings against these could just be the beginning.  Treasury Secretary Mnuchin refuses to turn over the President's tax records to Congress - in direct violation of statute.  That's sufficient grounds for impeachment and removal.  Jared Kushner is up-to-the-neck in nearly everything the President does.  Would anybody really be sorry to see him go?

The beginning of impeachment proceedings against these and other aides and advisors would create opportunities for Congressional committees to compel testimony and the production of documents which might eventually used against the President himself.  Such proceedings might also persuade other members, or former members, of the Administration to come forward with stories yet untold.

Best of all, impeachment of Barr, Miller, Sanders, and others would unite virtually all Democrats, something the prospect of impeaching the President seems, at this moment, unlikely to achieve.

Congress should begin here and now.  Impeach the minions.  One by one, deprive the President of his enablers and defenders - all the while compiling additional evidence against Individual One, himself.

It's the right thing to do, or at least, a right thing to do, until Democrats can unite behind the larger task.

A World Class Idea

Starting in June, qualifying candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination will engage in a series of twelve "debates" - six in 2019, six more in the early months of 2020.  The rules for qualifying are fairly generous.  A dozen candidates had qualified by late March, so figure at least sixteen will make the cut before things get under way.

Since there will be so many candidates, the Democratic National Committee has decided to split the field for the first "debate" into two consecutive nights, using a random process to assure that one debate will not feature the leading candidates and the other relative unknowns.

All of this sounds relatively fair - as though the DNC were trying to make up for leaning so heavily in favor of their preferred candidate in 2016.  But making things fair doesn't mean making them sensible - and these so-called "debates", with each night featuring seven or more candidates in a desperate struggle to impress, make absolutely no sense.  They are, at best, joint press conferences.

At worst, as the Republican version proved in 2016, they tend to favor the loudest, most aggressive, least nuanced speakers, rather than those who make the best, most reasoned arguments. 

What mass debates absolutely cannot do is inform potential Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers how well their eventual choice might perform in October, 2020, in a one-on-one confrontation with the Republican nominee.  Which, one would think, would be a consideration.

Now, there is no particular reason to expect the DNC to develop a process that makes sense.  This is, after all, the same DNC that found a way to lose the White House to Donald Trump - a thing most knowledgeable folks considered an impossibility until it actually happened.  

But really, given that thirty months have elapsed since the disaster of 2016, you'd think the DNC might have come up with something better than these tedious, uninformative cattle-calls they insist on calling "debates".

Especially since, in 2018, basically the entire planet - including the US - experienced the phenomenon called The World Cup, which uses a rather brilliant method to narrow a large field of contenders into a smaller one, while giving each contender a chance to play itself into the second round.

Now, as there are about seven billion people better able to explain the World Cup than I am, I'm not going to do that here.  I'd probably get some details wrong, and wind up having to apologize endlessly to readers who actually give a damn about soccer (or football) - a game played during the time of year when real men (I don't presume to speak for real women) are watching baseball. 

But the basic idea of the World Cup's first round - translated into terms of the Democratic nomination contest - might go like this.  

By a random process, the DNC would divide the field of qualifying candidates into groups of four (or five).  During the summer of 2019, each group would get together for a designated period (perhaps a week) and - over the course of that period - each member of the group would debate each other member, one-on-one, for 90 minutes.  The rules would be derived from those used in recent presidential contests.

Once all of the groups had completed their round-robin debates, the DNC would make all of these  debates available online, so that those interested could watch them when and as (and as often as) they chose.  [Note to DNC:  The technology for this actually exists.  I'm pretty sure.]

By hosting a series of round-robin, one-on-one debates, the DNC would thus give each candidate a chance to show what she or he can do against a single opponent - responding to valid points, defending their positions, matching wits - rather than posturing, interrupting, grimacing and gesticulating in order to get attention.  

That, alone, should justify going to a round-robin format, but there are other good reasons for doing so.

For one thing, while placing seven or eight candidates on a stage necessarily gives some a distinct positional advantage, placing two candidates on a stage can be completely fair.

Moreover, because two reasonably intelligent candidates could, to a certain extent, exchange ideas without the interference of a moderator, the role of that moderator should be significantly reduced.

Most of all, by using this process, the candidate who eventually wins the Democratic nomination would have gotten a good deal of practice at the sort of high-stakes, face-to-face confrontation that he or she will have with Donald Trump in the fall of 2020.

Which makes perfect sense.  Why not use a debate format which assures that the eventual Democratic nominee gets the gig, at least in part, by performing in the same sort of debate she or he will have to face in the actual election campaign?

If you think about it, the present format - by which the party's nomination will be decided, in significant part, through a unique procedure unrelated to anything that will occur in the fall campaign, is simply bizarre.  It makes about as much sense as - I don't know...

as deciding who breaks a tie in a sporting event which features fast-moving team play, by having one player at a time try to kick a ball from a fixed position past a goalie who knows it's coming.

And who would ever come up with a rule like that?