Please don’t impeach Donald Trump
“Be careful what you wish for, it might just come true.”
The wisdom of that old saying about the consequences of your wish coming true possibly being worse than you thought may never be more relevant than right now with the rising howls for the impeachment of Donald Trump.
That’s because, as bad as Trump is, the United States could actually be in worse shape in the future if Mike Pence, his seemingly benign vice-president, replaces him in the Oval Office.
Indeed, Pence could well turn out to be a complete disaster as president for liberal-minded Americans. In sharp contrast to Trump, the former Indiana governor is a serious politician with extremist policy views that liberals seriously don’t like.
And that’s why liberal-minded Americans, and like-minded Canadians, should be hoping the U.S. Congress doesn’t impeach Trump — at least not just right away.
Calls for Trump’s impeachment have risen sharply in the past week following his sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, the revelation that he shared sensitive intelligence with Russian officials and reports that he had allegedly asked Comey to drop the FBI investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
More than a dozen Democratic members of Congress have called for Trump’s impeachment. They argue Trump’s actions are an obstruction of justice and constitute grounds for impeachment.
A poll released earlier this week shows more Americans support impeaching Trump than oppose the idea. The survey, conducted May 12-14 by Public Policy Polling, found 48 per cent back such a move compared to 41per cent who are against it. The process to impeach a president is relatively simple. First, a committee of the House of Representatives approves articles of impeachment. The U.S. Constitution says a president can be impeached for “treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” They can’t be impeached just because they are incompetent, as Trump is proving to be. Second, the full House then votes to approve the articles. Third, the Senate must approve the impeachment articles by a two-thirds majority to convict a president. Only then would a president be officially removed from office.
No president has ever been kicked out through the impeachment process. Bill Clinton, in 1998 with the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and Andrew Johnson, in 1868, were both impeached by the House but later acquitted in the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before he was actually impeached by the Senate for his role in the Watergate affair.
For anti-Trump people who wish to see him dumped, though, the prospect of Mike Pence should be chilling. He’s a true believer, a devout evangelistic Christian, a hard-line conservative on social issues, a get-tough-on-crime advocate, a hawk on foreign and defence issues and a guy with a history of attacks on civil rights and freedoms.
Pence, a one-time radio talk show host, has been an elected politician since 2000, first as a congressman and most recently as governor of Indiana.
In Congress, he was a champion of the right-wing Tea Party, consistently voting to cut government spending and comparing the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding Obamacare to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
As governor, he signed a controversial Religious Freedom Restoration bill into law in 2015 that discriminated against gay people by allowing businesses to refuse service based on their religious beliefs.
He also signed one of the strictest abortion bills in the U.S., cut funding for public health departments, favoured moves to turn away Syrian refugees from Indiana and oversaw the Indiana State Police as it raided and shut a voter-registration program for African Americans.
In the past I’ve called Trump the worst president ever and raised the likelihood he may be mentally unstable, neither of which I take back. But for now, Trump is constrained by both Republicans and Democrats who are unlikely to pass any of his major political initiatives. Also, the military generals will likely control Trump’s urges to go to war.
However if Pence takes over the Republicans, who control Congress, will rally behind him, allowing him to push through an overall agenda more conservative than anything Trump might consider.
If Trump must go, hopefully it won’t happen until after the mid-term elections in November 2018 when the Democrats might win control of either the Senate or House, thus allowing them to block any extreme policies from Pence.
So please don’t impeach Trump, at least not just yet.
Bob Hepburn’s column appears Thursday. bhepburn@thestar.ca