It’s time to reassess ‘treason’ after Helsinki
Russia-friendly posturing isn’t impeachable
Has there been a change in mood in anti-Trump America? The president’s bizarre, awkward joint performance with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki Monday was ostensibly greeted with as much outrage as ever: accusations that Trump had committed “treason,” having allegedly done so through the unusual nexus of a press conference, were splashed across the front pages of what can safely be called opposition newspapers. But this led to an amusing, visibly reluctant reaction in other quarters, as calmer editorialists and reporters tried to explain that “treason” would involve the overthrow of the government of which Trump is the chief executive.
The U.S. Constitution, perhaps unfortunately, was designed to give a narrow definition of “treason” by the standards of the time.
This was intended to protect ordinary citizens from the bouts of political bloodletting that were a fairly routine feature of English life before 1688, and the Founding Fathers failed to establish a separate, stricter standard for those at the summit of public life.
It would be hard to commit treason with nothing more than a microphone, even for someone who wasn’t the president, and who thus has some authority to define the character and impetus of United States foreign policy.
A president is allowed, alas, to undermine the élan of NATO by complaining about the U.S.’s heavy responsibilities as its guarantor; by expressing childish admiration for the political technique of a Russian leader; and even by acting as though he was eyeballing the pact’s fire exit. This does not make any of this a good idea, but the best practical solution to it is electoral — a truth that, let’s face it, no one committed to Trump’s political elimination wants to hear. (Guess what? Polling evidence shows that Trump’s antics in Helsinki were strongly disapproved of by Democrats — and liked just fine by Republicans.) Trump cannot be impeached by Congress for having a Russiafriendly foreign policy, however crummy or improvised, or for quarrelling openly with the American deep state.
If the president can be found guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors” that is another thing, but that would require courtroom-worthy evidence of action, as opposed to indications of presidential doctrine or feeling or even strong hints of compromised personal interest. Trump did behave in Helsinki like someone who is beholden to Russia, or who is anxious for a rapprochement with Putin’s state. Yet he was, and this could not have come as a surprise, quick to try reversing himself later — emphasizing how tough he has been with Russia and how tough he is prepared to continue to be. Grrr!
Since I’m not on a diet of television news, I tend to interpret this as Trumpian “leadership” technique. They are the actions of someone who is convinced that anything can be accomplished by means of erratic emotional style and business-literature verbal tactics.
These include cheap personal praise for negotiating opponents, which has become a perfectly foreseeable theme of Trump as a diplomat. (The tactical corollary is that very popular or highly esteemed people are especially vulnerable to outbursts of surprise criticism, and that has been a feature of Trump, too.)
It does not really cost the United States anything for Trump to praise Putin as skilled and strong (as a tyrant, he has been effective at maintaining domestic moral legitimacy, even if judged by the cost in shed blood) or to portray Kim Jong Un as a young man coping with terrible responsibilities. (Trump’s distaste for NATO is more dangerous as rhetoric, but did the other member nations forget for a while that political legitimacy within the United States is a prerequisite for the organization’s existence? If in the long run we devote a little more attention to the necessary housekeeping, Trump may have done the world a service.)
When newspapers react to Trumpian interpersonal blather with indignation and rage, this serves Trump’s purpose, earning him credit for personal sacrifice from the adversary. “Wise Trump has seen the truth of my character, despite the swinish noise of the American intelligentsia!” All businessmen try to create this kind of feeling in the hearts of those they intend to seduce, coerce, exploit, dominate or violate. If the United States is ever tempted to elect another dealmaker-outsider president from the world of business, it should not be astonished to see the same thing again — play-acting on the international stage by a gross father-figure who alternately withholds and distributes approval, seemingly according to whim. A principled Reaganite approach was never in the cards.
I am not convinced we will ever find hard evidence that Trump is a marionette dangling from KGB strings. And I sense that, in fact, the fantasy of a “pee tape” or other smoking gun that will be broadcast to a rejoicing American public one night is being subtly abandoned. The media response to Helsinki was less along the tediously familiar lines of “Gotcha! He can’t survive this!” and more “Ugh, not again."
There is still a manic anti-Trump hard core that talks wildly of “treason” at every opportunity. In the judgment of history these may well be the observers we find most admirable in retrospect, but in the meantime: do they seem to be helping?
The anti-Trump maximalists do have a “boy who cried wolf” problem, whether or not it is of their own making personally. In the eyes of Hollywood-type Democrats, every Republican regime since Eisenhower is a unique, unprecedented and screamingly urgent threat to American democracy. I will no doubt be told that this phenomenon happens because every Republican is, in fact, legitimately worse than the last. Perhaps the division of the U.S. electorate into mutually uncomprehending camps is exclusively the fault of one party, and has nothing to do with past Democratic abuse of cultural instruments that the Democrats undeniably control.
I reject this not so much because I am aligned with Republicans, but more as a believer in pervasive American devolution. Yet I believe equally strongly, on strict empirical grounds, in the robustness of the United States as a system; and I am less inclined than ever to surrender the suspicion that almost everyone overestimates the importance of who the president is — partly because a bad one can inspire pretty fast political realignment.
The midterm congressional elections will be held with a long-forgotten fact re-emerging in the American popular consciousness: that much of the president’s power to set foreign policy and foul up trade is actually the property of Congress, and could be reclaimed after a century of careless delegation.
Perhaps some Americans are beginning to consider that it does not matter most whether you are with the good guys in the Trump/antiTrump drama. Which is not to say you do not want to be one of the good guys. But the opportunity for American millennials, considered as a generation on the cusp of electoral dominance, is not just to kick Trump out, but to renovate the presidency so that the republic can survive having an unsuitable or even compromised person as president. Everybody got that? Are we good? Eyes on the ball, people.
IT DOES NOT REALLY COST THE UNITED STATES ANYTHING FOR TRUMP TO PRAISE PUTIN.