For all his complaints about impeachment being a “witch hunt,” President Trump made it work out pretty well for himself.
First and foremost, he was acquitted. He is still president, and he will now spend the next eight months attacking Democrats. He will say he was exonerated of partisan political charges and that Democrats simply never accepted the results of the 2016 election.
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Impeachment has also increased Trump’s approval ratings. As of Tuesday, the day before his acquittal and his triumphant State of the Union speech, Trump reached an all-time high of 49% in Gallup and a near-high of 45% in the RealClearPolitics average.
Only one Republican, Mitt Romney, gave credence to the Democrats’ partisan impeachment. Trump would have been better off if Romney had stayed on his side, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals.
The articles of impeachment that Democrats chose were inappropriate. One was a dumb joke; the other was too weak to consider valid. Obstruction of Congress is not a crime. When presidents assert their executive authority, Congress has a recourse short of impeachment: going to the courts. But, in an effort to rush through impeachment, Democrats chose not to have courts settle the dispute between the legislative and executive branches. The senators and representatives who voted for that article merit special contempt from all thinking people.
As for the other article, abuse of power, members of Congress were called on to exercise judgment and discretion. It is not enough that Trump may have acted improperly, which we have argued he did, the question is whether he acted so improperly that the only remedy for the nation is to remove him from office. In fact, Trump’s act of withholding appropriated funds from Ukraine has a remedy in the Impoundment Control Act of 1974; it is not impeachment and removal of the president but a civil lawsuit against him.
Trump deserved to be chastened, and he has been, albeit unofficially, but the case that his actions justified his removal from office was simply never made. Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Lamar Alexander were eloquent in making this important distinction. After all, every president abuses power in some way. President Barack Obama’s lieutenants were notorious for evading rightful congressional oversight, but that never would have justified his impeachment.
Throughout the process, Democrats used hyperbolic language in trying to describe what would happen if Trump were acquitted. Rep. Jerry Nadler, one of the House impeachment managers, said if Trump weren’t removed from office, then he would effectively be a “dictator.” That’s preposterous. If Democrats believe their case against Trump was so airtight, they will now have the opportunity to spend the 2020 election attacking his actions in Ukraine based on the evidence they’ve gathered, and voters will be able to decide the merits of removing Trump from office. This is as it should be.
