President Trump’s defenders will win acquittal of the president on the two charges of impeachment. We should hope they do not seek a larger “win” than that.
High-profile trials in America often become trials of something much bigger than the defendant’s guilt or innocence.
When a Missouri grand jury in 2014 considered the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, it seemed as though there was a lot more on the table than whether police officer Darren Wilson plausibly believed “that the use of deadly force was immediately necessary to effect the arrest” of Brown. It became, in the media and for much of the public, a question of whether black Americans are mistreated by police and whether police are immune to consequences.
So when the grand jury decided to not charge Wilson, righteous indignation ensued.
When Ethel and Julius Rosenberg stood trial in 1951, it became a bigger question than the factual matter of whether Julius Rosenberg stole nuclear secrets and passed them on to the Soviet Union. In various corners of the popular imagination, it became a trial about communism vs. capitalism, about political dissent, and even about anti-Semitism.
It was the same with the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Conservatives tried to make it a trial about Clinton’s immorality and about the need to preserve virtue and outrage. While some of Clinton’s defenders (such as Joe Lieberman) made a narrow defense, others accepted much of the Republicans’ broader framing and fought on that turf. They helped turn Clinton’s impeachment into a culture war.
The Left happily accepted the help of pornographer Larry Flint. They brushed off an extramarital affair in the Oval Office with an intern as a minor personal matter — one that only nosy prudes would care about. And feminists openly made the argument that Clinton’s policies excused any misdeeds.
Betty Friedan declared of Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, “Enemies are attempting to bring him down through allegations about some dalliance with an intern … Whether it’s a fantasy, a setup, or true, I simply don’t care.”
Democratic congressmen, meanwhile, made a might-makes-right argument. Congress has “no right to overturn the considered judgment of the American people,” regardless of the president’s misdeeds, argued Jerry Nadler. Other Democratic members called the impeachment “a coup.” These were the arguments in defense of Clinton. Then Clinton won. And so, in a sense, these immoral and destructive arguments won.
If you thought cheating on your wife was a grave sin, you lost. If you thought an oath to tell the whole truth was morally and legally binding, you lost. If you thought winning an election didn’t give you license to do whatever you wished, you lost.
America “Moved On” (that group was also created in the process) from those old-fashioned ideas. America moved on steadily for 18 years, and the destination of this journey was Trump’s election. Evangelical leaders, having been set “straight” by the verdict of 1999, moved on from their old-fashioned moralism until they ultimately made excuses for Trump’s dishonesty, infidelity, and predations.
Trump’s defenders today ought to remember the societal costs of Clinton’s broad “win.” Accordingly, they shouldn’t assert more than they need to, and certainly not more than is true.
Conservatives should not want a victory for executive privilege or the power of the presidency. That would harm the country, which has already seen the executive take too much power from Congress.
America needs Congress to act constantly as a check on the power of the executive. Senators shouldn’t hold their role as Republicans in higher regard than their roles as senators. If senators become the minions of the president simply because he is of their party and under attack, then America’s constitutional system is weakened.
Republican senators may be jurors or judges, depending on how you think of impeachment. Certainly, they shouldn’t act as defense counsel. That will lead to them speaking falsehoods that paper over abuses of power.
Pat Cipollone actually is Trump’s defense counsel. That’s why he said on the Senate floor Tuesday, “The president has done nothing wrong.” That is a false claim, but it’s what lawyers are generally supposed to say about their clients.
Conservative senators should not repeat that line because it normalizes a misdeed. Trump tried to leverage the president’s foreign-policy prerogatives in order to inflict political pain on a rival for the presidency. At best, Trump intervened where he should have recused himself. And along the way, he placed U.S. foreign policy in the hands of shady figures such as Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas.
The president’s actions were wrong. He violated the public trust by putting his public office to work for his political ends. Republican senators may not agree that these are high crimes meriting impeachment, but they mustn’t call bad things good.
Impeachment can fail without falsehoods winning. But it’s up to Republican senators to ensure they narrow this case to the articles of impeachment instead of making it about the character of Trump and his actions.
