As has become a Capitol Hill custom, everybody involved in the weird game of “chicken” over impeachment articles is wrong. All the lead actors are standing not on principle but for raw political advantage. It’s time for everyone to stop the games and start a thorough, fair, and transparently open trial.
The worst actor by far has been Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is pushing the truly idiotic idea that a trial can be held without ever hearing from key first-hand witnesses. If there can be a level of shamefulness worse then shameful and a level of cynicism worse than cynical, McConnell has sunk to those levels.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, though, has certainly been no angel.
Pelosi actually began this tussle by making sense but long ago left sense behind in favor of political tit-for-tat. To the extent that she ever did explain a real reason for withholding the impeachment articles for weeks rather than sending them directly to the Senate, she said that she wanted to know what the rules were so that she would know which members of her caucus would be best suited to serve as “impeachment managers” to try the case. This makes sense: Every prosecutor’s office has some lawyers better at explaining the nuts and bolts of evidence, some better at telling a big-picture “narrative,” and some better at handling the sorts of procedural disputes on which later appeals can turn. Likewise, if no new witnesses or evidence is to be allowed, Pelosi would want different managers than if witnesses must be cross-examined.
Pelosi never bothered to complete that argument, though, merely saying that she wanted to know what the rules would be, without explaining why.
For three weeks since first saying she would withhold the impeachment articles, Pelosi has acted in every way possible to justify accusations that her move is a mere gambit, a weird power play. She has never refuted McConnell’s accusation that she is trying to dictate rules to the Senate rather than just wanting to know what the playing field will be. She has forfeited any possible posture of someone wanting fundamental fairness rather than trying (ineptly) to play high-stakes political chess.
It’s time for the games to stop. McConnell should draw up rules that include explicit parameters for calling witnesses and pass them quickly through the Senate. Pelosi should present the impeachment articles to the Senate while naming a very large group of impeachment managers from which a “chairman” of the managers can pick and choose depending on the needs as the trial advances.
Both sides should act with all deliberate speed, seeking neither to artificially hasten or artificially slow down the proceedings but instead to let the trial’s pace be determined by its internal, organic needs in order to produce all the facts, evidence, and arguments needed for a rational conclusion.
The impeachment and possible removal of a president is serious business. Everyone in Congress should treat it that way.
