Delay lets gravity of impeachment sink in

Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi overplay her hand by delaying the articles of impeachment for a month before submitting them to the Senate on Jan. 16?

At least two guests on the Jan. 12 edition of “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” think so. The Washington Post’s Rachel Bade said Pelosi failed to get a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the status of witnesses during the Senate trial. Nor did she get a resolution on how the trial would operate.

Bade said Pelosi is “clearly putting a positive spin on what a lot of Democrats have privately said was a failed strategy.”

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the past three weeks had been good ones for the president and, “It’s largely because the speaker made a serious error in political judgment in my view by holding back.”

But these assessments of Pelosi’s strategy don’t pay enough attention to the possibility that, had the articles of impeachment been delivered as soon as they were approved, they might have been quickly dismissed by the Republican Senate.

Thus, Pelosi did what any smart strategist who holds a losing hand does. She played the only card she had: Delay.

And why not? Trump has taken careful measures to hide evidence and suppress witnesses. Over time, inevitably, more information will come to light. Since the articles of impeachment were approved on Dec 18, we’ve learned about the revealing testimony of Lev Parnas, the expressed willingness of former national security adviser John Bolton to testify and the recent finding by the Government Accountability Office that withholding military aid from Ukraine was in itself an illegal act.

But the slower pace that brought the articles to the Senate only last week thoroughly befits the gravity of the charges against the president.

It’s hard to imagine an abuse of power more serious than using official acts to pressure a foreign government to interfere in an American election. It takes time to absorb the severity of such an act. The delay provided some of that time, and it sent the message that, even though the odds are strongly against them, the Democrats will not be satisfied with a biased, open-and-shut case in the Senate.

In fact, no American should be.

We’ve heard many times that the impeachment of a president is a political proceeding, not a judicial one. To be honest, I’m not sure what that means.

Certainly it does not mean Democrats can be allowed to mount a “witch hunt” in order to bring down a president they don’t like.

Nor does it mean Republicans should willfully turn away from evidence that has a bearing on the president’s guilt or innocence.

Pelosi’s delay in delivering the articles actually postponed the beginning of the Senate trial by only a week or so. But even this brief pause may have provided time for some senators to further absorb the gravity of the allegations.

Indeed, some Republican senators appear to be wondering if it’s right to ignore evidence in order to comply, lockstep, with the bidding of their party.

So, senators, call the witnesses. Look at the documents. Your decision is bigger than politics and is much too important to be hurried through without all the available evidence.