“When
Congressman Brad Sherman proposed
the first article of impeachment against President Donald Trump, the
California Democrat carefully explained the necessity of the resolution, the
legislative strategy he would employ to advance it, and the difficult political
landscape that would have to be traversed in order to hold to account the most
irresponsible and lawless President in American history.
“‘I
act not for partisan advantage. Having served with [Vice President] Mike Pence
in the House for twelve years, I disagree with him on most issues of public
policy,’ Sherman explained
in June, acknowledging Democratic discomfort with Trump’s likely successor,
were the president to be removed from office. ‘But we must move forward as
quickly as possible to ensure a competent government that respects the Constitution
and the rule of law…’
“Those
were the urgent, yet carefully considered, words of a lawmaker who had
determined to bear true faith and allegiance to an oath of office that requires
him to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all
enemies, foreign and domestic.’ He was not engaging in the partisan maneuvers
that so frequently characterize Congressional action (or inaction). The
Congressman was taking on an awesome responsibility with the seriousness of
purpose that the founders intended when they established a Constitutional
remedy for the crisis that arises when a President dishonors his position and
threatens the republic.
“Sherman
recognized, as many have, that Trump must be impeached. He acted as an
elected representative of the people must when the need for a Constitutional
cure can no longer be neglected by those with the power to apply it.
“Unfortunately,
on a contemporary political landscape that is defined by the corruptions of
partisanship, and the cynicism that develops when those corruptions go
unaddressed for too long, Sherman’s seriousness put him at odds with the media
and political elites who shape the discourse of our country. He was treated as
an outlier, admonished in private by colleagues, and dismissed in public by
commentators who are far more inclined to propagate talking-head trivia than to
explore the original intent of the U.S. Constitution. Most Americans, even
those who favor the removal of Donald John Trump from office, were unaware of
what Sherman had done.
“But
there is no question that Sherman, a Harvard Law School graduate and instructor
with two decades of experience in Congress, did everything right. He outlined
his objection to the Trump presidency not in broad or emotional terms, but with
a sharp focus on concerns about obstructions of justice and abuses of power.
“Chief
among these was Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey, in what Trump would
tell
Russian diplomats was an effort to relieve the ‘pressure’ of FBI inquiries into
links between the President’s campaign team and the Russians. (In the same week
that Sherman unveiled his article of impeachment, Trump appeared to acknowledge
reports that Robert Mueller III, the special counsel in the Russia probe, had
expanded his investigation to consider these obstructions of justice.)
“In
a well-ordered and well-functioning media system, the announcement by a senior
lawmaker that an article of impeachment had been written and submitted for
consideration would have led the evening news and topped the front pages of
morning papers.
“But
decades of consolidation, conglomeration, and bumbling responses to
technological progress have left the United States without a democracy
sustaining media system. Major media outlets are not merely disinclined to
speak truth to power; frequently they serve as stenographers to power. And
power maintains an at best unsteady acquaintance with Constitutional remedies,
especially when they involve accountability. For the most part, political and
media elites dismiss impeachment in particular, and the system of checks and
balances in general, as a distraction.
“They
prefer to obsess about Trump’s tweets, palace intrigues that pit the white
nationalist and Wall Street wings of the current administration against each
other, and Ivanka Trump’s complaints about the supposed incivility that is
directed toward a man who encouraged his supporters to harass protesters and to
chant ‘lock her up’ at the mention of his 2016 opponent’s name.
“The
media’s rigid refusal to engage with the impeachment debate did not surprise
serious students of presidential accountability. A decade ago, The New York Times, The Washington Post,
CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all dismissed potent appeals for
Congressional action to censure George W. Bush and Dick Cheney after the former
President and Vice President maneuvered the United States into an undeclared,
illegal, immoral, and ultimately catastrophic war in Iraq.
“For
the most part, media outlets get excited about impeachment only if claims
of alleged wrongdoing are salacious (as with the ridiculous attempt by
Congressional Republicans to remove Bill Clinton in the late 1990s), or if
there is general agreement that an executive has veered so dramatically off
course that the elites themselves begin to worry about a threat to their
circumstance.
“There
is good reason to believe that Donald Trump will ultimately inspire precisely
those worries. His erratic and arbitrary approach to even the most basic of
responsibilities, his disregard for facts in combination with his rank
dishonesty, his penchant for surrounding himself with authoritarians, and his
willingness to act on their advice have already caused very powerful people to
fret that this presidency could end in tragedy—for Trump and for the country.
“But,
at least for now, most elites are not sufficiently concerned about Trump’s
misdeeds to contemplate his removal from office before the end of a term that
concludes on January 20, 2021.
“As
such, Sherman’s proposal for more immediate relief was accorded a half-column
on the corner of page 11 of the national edition of The New York Times. The article
featured an academic and a Republican congressman brushing off the
intervention, as the paper itself chimed in to declare: ‘The congressman’s
efforts to impeach the president, just six months into his term, have virtually
no chance of succeeding given the strong majority Republicans hold in the
House, where impeachment proceedings must begin.’
“The
reviews were just as bad, or worse, from other major newspapers and the
broadcast networks—as well as from the cautious political websites that
fantasize that they are ‘new media’ but generally repurpose ‘old media’ dogma
with bells and whistles. It was the journalistic equivalent of Bob Dylan
singing, ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.’
“This
is how it works in Washington, D.C.: While America is increasingly
post-partisan, or more precisely anti-partisan, our media frame the national
discourse in the narrowest of partisan terms. In effect, the media constrain
rather than encourage debate about obvious and necessary responses to evolving
crises.
“Never
mind that the overwhelming majority of Americans have lost confidence in a
President who, it should be remembered, received only 46 percent of the vote in
the 2016 presidential election and trailed his Democratic rival by almost three
million votes.
“Never
mind that the nation’s great Constitutional scholars say this loss of
confidence is appropriate, as the President has committed acts that put him at
odds with his oath of office and his duties to the republic.
“Never
mind that those scholars argue that Trump has committed impeachable acts. Never
mind that polls show
more Americans favor Trump’s impeachment than oppose it. Never mind that, where
citizens and their elected representatives are given an opportunity to weigh in
on the matter of Trump’s continued tenure, they have done so—with formal
resolutions calling for Congress to impeach Trump coming from communities
across the country, from a town
meeting in tiny Charlotte, Vermont (population 3,754), to the city
council of Los Angeles, California (population: 3,976,322).
“Never
mind that, through petitions and letter-writing campaigns and marches and
rallies, millions of Americans are, according
to attorney John Bonifaz, a key figure in the burgeoning Impeach Donald Trump
Now Campaign, ‘rising in the defense of our Constitution and our democracy!’
“Whenever
impeachment is placed ‘on the table’ by the American people and emboldened
officials such as Sherman, it is snatched back by partisans who have no taste
for a debate about this Constitutional remedy. This does an injustice to the
nation’s Constitutional history. As George Mason told the Constitutional
Convention of 1787, ‘No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment
should be continued.’
“Two
hundred and thirty years ago, Mason and those who joined him in
establishing a system of checks and balances argued that
impeachment was the answer to a pair of questions: ‘Shall any man be above
Justice? Above all, shall that man be above it, who can commit the most
extensive injustice?’
“The
answer to these questions remains the same. Unfortunately, this is not the
answer that House Speaker Paul Ryan, the most ardent of Trump’s defenders and
the most partisan of Republican stalwarts, wants to hear. Even more
unfortunately, it is not the answer that top Democrats are prepared to
entertain. The leaders of what is supposed to be America’s ‘opposition party’
boldly proclaim their devotion to ‘the resistance,’ but they are shy about
embracing the tool that the Constitution affords those who are serious about
resisting pretenders to autocracy…”
For the entire article,
The Case for Impeachment by
John Nichols, click here.
