A system asunder

The plumber flipped on the washing machine to check the drain problem, and I urged him to be careful not to let the darned thing overflow again. He assured me he wouldn’t let that happen.

Then he turned his back to the apparatus and engaged me on the subject of impeachment.

One second he was fully wound, telling me it was as bad this time as it was with Bill Clinton, with nothing happening except lawyers getting rich and veterans getting the runaround. The next second he was saying, oh, Lord, he needed towels.

The plumbing and political conditions were metaphors for each other.

Both were broken. The difference was that the plumbing was easier to fix. I didn’t have to rely on national Democrats, but only a talkative professional, for that.

On Sunday, The New York Times published a front-page “news analysis” explaining that the Democrats had done it again. As with Bob Mueller’s flame-out before, they had violated the rule that, if you’re going to go after the king, you’d better take him out.

The essay quoted sources saying Donald Trump would emerge worse than ever from his clear wrongdoing in the Ukraine affair. (And the wrongdoing indeed is clear. Just ask Asa Hutchinson or Lamar Alexander or any Republican left—there might be a half-dozen—who’ll whisper truth.)

Trump will now blend his victory lap and re-election campaign. He will bellow that his innocence has been proven, which of course it hasn’t, and that his persecution by desperate Democrats is evident, as of course it is.

The article asserted that Trump would now assert vindication and be more likely than ever to keep abusing the presidency for his personal purposes.

Since impeachment was never for the purpose of removal, because Republican senators are afraid of Trump, the main argument for it was that maybe it would shame the man-child into not engaging in such an abuse of office again.

Shame Trump? Shame Trump? Good job, Nancy. Way to go, Adam. And way to go, Iowa Democrats if, last night, in your overblown caucuses, you gave a leading plurality to Bernie Sanders, who as the Democratic nominee against Trump would send frightened swing voters into the bellower’s bosom.

Or maybe you gave your leading plurality to Joe Biden, who verbally overflows like a clogged washing machine. He is the rarest of politicians in that he would render Trump the least inarticulate candidate. And that’s a bigly thing.

Also, on Sunday morning, the media reported that the Justice Department admits in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by a public-interest group that 24 emails sought by the plaintiff need to be protected by executive privilege. They concerned Trump’s ordering the holding up of congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine for his personal political purposes.

In other words, they would have been evidence if gathered by House impeachers in making the case and allowed by Senate jurors in considering it.

And it does not make a darn. Trump did it. We know that. But the issues are whether the House built a patient and exhaustively substantive case or a rushed and flawed one—it was the latter—and whether 67 senators including 20 Republicans would ever vote to remove him from office even if the evidence of Trump’s action was ponderously and fully substantiated.

And they wouldn’t.

Alexander, the oh-so-sanctimonious retiring Republican senator from Tennessee, told the unctuous truth. He said he would not vote for witnesses because the calling of them would be pointless. He said that, sure, Trump did it but it’s not a case for removal from office, particularly considering the culture war that removal would ignite.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska expressed herself as another Republican who might have done better if she thought the nation could withstand a Republican senator doing better.

She said the House sent over a rushed, biased case and there was no way now to undo the unfairness no matter how many witnesses were called.

She was right. It may sound like Monday-morning quarterbacking, except that I wrote it while the game was afoot: The House should have held detailed fact-finding hearings on the Ukraine matter in the relevant committee and waited to get court rulings on whether White House aides could be compelled to testify.

And then it probably should have passed a censure motion rather than throw itself on the guillotine of Mitch McConnell’s cover-up.

Murkowski also voted against witnesses, I suspect, to spare a 50-50 vote that would have put political pressure on Chief Justice John Roberts. As presider over the impeachment trial, he could have asserted a questionable right to break the tie.

I suspect Murkowski thought the judicial branch should be spared the sullying heaped properly by this affair on the executive and legislative ones.