Every government will at some point come face-to-face with political corruption, whether from a lack of accountability or a lack of order, or both. The United States and Israel are facing this difficulty now. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been indicted on three separate corruption charges, and here in the U.S., President Trump is staring down impeachment.
And while the merits of the cases against Trump and Netanyahu should be weighed and debated, one thing stands out: These are powerful, ambitious men, both who seem to have crossed the thin line that prevents ambition from becoming corruption.
Pundits talk about ambition as if it’s a bad thing. One psychoanalysis after another has confirmed that Trump is, in fact, an egotistical narcissist who cares about nothing but his own self-interest, a relatively safe claim given the state of the president’s Twitter feed. But even the founders agreed that this kind of zeal could be used as an additional check on a government eager to break free from its restraints. But someone must check the president, too.
Congress is trying to do just that, but it’s sad that we’ve even reached this point. It is true that the Democrats’ impeachment efforts are innately partisan. It is also true that Trump could have prevented this.
But instead of acting prudently, Trump solicited a foreign government’s help in his quest to take down a political rival and allowed his ambition get the better of him. Multiple witnesses have confirmed that Trump’s actions in regard to Ukraine were politically motivated. The president and his allies will deny this, of course, but it is plainly true that Trump was less interested in fighting foreign corruption than he was in winning reelection.
Similarly, Netanyahu faces severe political consequences for the mess he’s created. Netanyahu has been involved in at least three corruption cases, the most problematic of which involves a charge that Netanyahu was bribed by a telecommunications executive to make regulatory decisions in his favor.
Uncontrollable ambition inevitably leads to the abuse of power. Luckily, the U.S. Constitution provides safeguards against this kind of abuse, impeachment being one of them. In Trump’s case, impeachment is the wrong solution to a real problem. The Senate will not convict, and it will be impossible to separate Trump’s removal from the Democrats’ partisan maneuvering.
In Israel, the case against Netanyahu is much more cut and dried. He very clearly broke the law and engaged in blatant acts of bribery and extortion. He should do the right thing and step down before Israel loses itself in an endless cycle of political deadlock.
It’s unlikely that Netanyahu will step down, just as it is unlikely that Trump will willingly leave the Oval Office. Ambitious men are attracted to power, and once they have it, it’s difficult to convince them to give it up. The good news is that leaders in both the U.S. and Israel have done so peacefully for decades, and that won’t change any time soon.
