Guilty as charged
The opening of the trial proceedings in the Senate has already produced an obvious result: the President has no defense against the charge that he tried to use US government aid to gain a personal political advantage over a potential rival, then obstructed Congress in its investigation. White House lawyers are not claiming he didn’t try to extort the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, only that he was free to do it and to block witnesses and documents the House of Representatives requested.
This amounts to the inverse of nolo contendere, in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt, but accepts punishment. Trump is admitting the facts, but the Republican-controlled Senate is protecting him from the penalty provided in the Constitution, removal from office. It has the power under the Constitution to do that and is exercising it with vigor, preventing even submission of documentary evidence and witness testimony to the wrongdoing.
The big question is how the country will react to a President who believes he can abuse power as much he wants and suffer no consequence. According to the first poll taken since the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate, a thin majority of Americans now believes he should be removed from office, a wider margin believes the charges against him are true, and two-thirds believe the proceedings in the Senate should include testimony from witnesses.
If confirmed, those results would be a substantial deviation from the trend line in recent months, which is basically flat. The partisan divide is still wide and Republicans in the Senate continue to believe that their prospects in the November election are more threatened by Trump-allied challengers in the primaries than by Democrats at the polls. None of the supposed Republican moderates in the Senate have budged from the majority on the many Democratic proposals to bring witnesses and documents into the process.
The Republicans have an option if the going gets rough. They could decide to defenestrate Trump and put Vice President Pence in his place. More genuinely conservative than Trump on social and religious issues, Pence could be relied on to appoint judges who would please the anti-abortion, pro-Christian, Republican base as well as continue the anti-immigration crusade (double meaning intended) Trump has conducted. What Pence lacks is even a rudimentary personality, never mind charisma.
The Democrats are meanwhile still engaged in the fratricidal warfare of the presidential primaries. For now the presidential hopefuls seem mostly incapable of refocusing their attacks on Trump rather than each other. That isn’t good, but the next month or two may well sort out who the candidate will be. If that doesn’t happen, the Democrats could go to the mid-July convention in Milwaukee without a candidate. A “brokered” convention would not be a good thing.
But the biggest single factor in the next election will be the economy. Trump’s bragging at Davos this week was based on falsehoods. The Obama expansion has continued, but growth is now slowing, though not dramatically yet. The Trump tax cut did little to stimulate the economy but a great deal to balloon the government deficit. The trade deal with China failed to correct most of the structural issues that have given the US such a large bilateral deficit. The trade deal with Mexico made desirable updates. Hourly wages have begun to perk up, but inequality continues its long rise.
The picture is worse on the national security front. The fights Trump has picked with North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran have produced no good results for the US. He has nothing to show for his lovefest with Russian President Putin, who still sits on a big piece of Ukraine. The Israel/Palestine peace plan is a bust. The NATO allies despise the President and are holding their breath for him to leave office. He ignores Latin America and Africa (to their benefit more than likely) while talking tough on China but doing precious little.
If there were professor who could judge the Trump Administration on its economic, social, and national security merits, it would get an F. He is not only guilty as charged, but incompetent as well.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
One thought on “Guilty as charged”
Comments are closed.
RSS - Posts
I believe blog points would be much better understood and accepted if they weren’t quite as personal as they are getting. As an Independent, while I’ve had strong and visceral aversions to a number of public officials from both parties, I’d refrain from pejorative labeling (in this case, Pence). It should enable one’s point to better resonate.
And, a counterpoint to the oft mentioned Obama recovery being the one we’re currently experiencing: by that reckoning, 7.5 growth years of the Bush II presidency would be due to the strong Clinton years, and the Great Recession at the beginning of Obama was initially his doing. Ridiculous, of course: while we tend to credit Presidents with the plus or minus economy during their terms, in reality they often have little to do with it directly and co-terminously. Of course, some administration policies can affect the economy over time, but very little coincide with the actual start and finish of an administration.
The crash that started at the end of the Bush II years was decades in the making. Most economists agree on that. Further, it started as early as the Community Reinvestment Act of the late 70’s, providing impetus over time for seriously questionable investment vehicles whose foundation were purely risky mortgage loans. The crash was thus bound to happen: it’s coincidence of timing that placed it in the latter days of one administration, and the early days of another.
As for the real Obama recovery (immediately post-crash), while successful with government bailouts (that Bush also supported), it’s questionable if the same would not have been achievable through Federal bankruptcy procedures — without taking major risk with public funds.
But alas, another topic altogether . . .