Why hasn’t Donald Trump been impeached yet?
. . . as answered on Quora, June 2, 2018 . . .
Every president in my lifetime could have been impeached on some grounds or another. Only one was. And that was for something rather trivial and stupid. Besides, the Senate did not concur with the House impeachment. So it was all a rather pointless enterprise. (Sorry, Bob Barr.)
And, to repeat, every president can be found doing something illegal. Why? Because there are so many laws to break. Just as every American is said to break “three felonies per day,” there are enough regulations hemming in political life that one infraction or another could be found.
Impeachment is not a criminal justice matter, in which Congress must react as a hanging judge over every crime committed by a president. Impeachment is a political matter, and it is by politics alone that the decision to impeach should be made — once a plausible ground for impeachment (“high crimes and misdemeanors”) has been found.
It looks to me that the Trump campaign did break at least one campaign finance law. It is still a bit obscure, but if Congress really wanted to, it could probably impeach him. But since campaign finance laws do not usually end up in prison time — with the exception of the Obama Administration’s successful prosecution of Dinesh D’Souza — one would not expect a simple abridgment of a goofy regulation to end in impeachment and trial.
Other than for political reasons.
And the Republican House is not likely to impeach its own party’s inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The Democrats need to regain the House to hope to do anything of this kind.
Which brings us back to pure politics: if Democrats keep up talking about impeaching Trump for minor points of law, and keep conjuring up wild, unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the man, they are going to wind up increasing turnout for Trump in 2020. Americans do not take kindly to the witch-huntery involved in this.
That is, hinged Americans do not. The unhinged remain enthusiasts of impeachment.
But back to my main point: Presidents commit crimes. Just as you and I commit crimes. Because there are so many idiotic regulations defining often quite innocent or at least tolerable actions as crimes.
What bothers me are the worse and worst things that presidents do — like authorizing mass murder overseas and the torture of combatant prisoners, not to mention all the unconstitutional actions the three major branches of federal government routinely engage in. These get scant pushback from the American people, partisans in particular.
It was not for bombing an aspirin factory that Clinton was impeached.
As far as I’m concerned, George W. Bush and Barack Obama should both be in prison for their foreign policy “missteps.” (They were not just mistakes.) But almost no one talks about that, and if they do, then only in a partisan way: Democrats wanted Bush in chains; Republicans wanted Obama under lock and key.
Perhaps because all this oppositionalism is mere partisan hysteria, our political leaders are — to too great an extent — unrestrained by the Constitution. Or by political pressure. Because sensible people dismiss it as idiotic. And because the really bad stuff is tacitly and explicitly supported by both parties.
We should not be talking impeachment. We should be talking, instead, about placing actual, effective limits on the Imperial Presidency.
twv
Wirkman Comment 