Trump and impeachment: Still not worth it
George Will says rhetoric about enforcing accountability on Trump ignores the fact that his reputation doesn’t hinge on a Senate trial.
WASHINGTON — Even before revelations about President Donald Trump’s pressuring Ukraine to assist his re-election campaign, many Democrats in the House of Representatives wanted to impeach him for this and that. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, rightly expressed her opposition to impeachment in five withering words: “He’s just not worth it.”
The Ukraine episode forced Pelosi, D-Calif., to favor impeachment, even though Trump’s acquittal by a Republican-controlled Senate was certain. Her and her caucus’ understandable fury about Trump’s encouragement of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a patently impeachable offense, made a second impeachment inevitable. That did not, however, make it prudent.
There are two reasons for impeaching a president, one retrospective, one prophylactic: to punish the president for gross misbehavior, or to protect the country from anticipatable future offenses by the president. Trump impeachment 2.0 is a variant of the latter. Its supposed purpose is to deter future presidents who might be as reckless as he was. For this reason, many serious scholars — see, for example, the writings of Princeton’s Keith Whittington — defend both the constitutionality and wisdom of impeaching and convicting this ex-president. Deterrence, however, presupposes rationality, and perhaps a conscience, neither of which would feature in any future iteration of the 45th president.
Political prudence is a talent. It involves applying crystalline principles to untidy realities. The principle of holding people accountable for their actions is generally sound. But high-minded rhetoric about enforcing “accountability” on Trump ignores the fact that neither his reputation nor his future political salience hinges on the Senate impeachment trial. Besides, almost all Senate Republicans, tarting up their timidity as scrupulousness, have latched onto a principle that many scholars, including Whittington, and some past practices refute — that impeaching a person no longer in office is unconstitutional.
Those who love Trump and those who loathe him — who today is undecided? — are all having altogether too much fun. The former are wallowing in the victimhood they think they share with him. The latter are luxuriating in a vengeance disconnected from the public good. And they are relishing the discomfort of Republican senators who will be damaged no matter whether they vote to convict or acquit. Regarding the reason for impeachment — the events of Jan. 6 — reasonable people, for whom seeing is believing, know what happened, and why. Trump supporters, for whom believing is seeing, cannot be reached by reasoning, constitutional or otherwise.
Democrats probably know that impeachment is not needed to keep Republicans, fresh from the frying pan, roasting in the fire Trump lit. Sen. Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican, this last week announced that he will not seek a third term in 2022. Trump easily carried Ohio by 8.13 percentage points in 2016 and 8.03 in 2020. Portman did not ascribe his decision to electoral considerations. He cannot, however, have happily anticipated trying to court voters who are as temperate as he is without detonating bitter-end Trump supporters. They are probably a majority of Republicans nationally.
Texas’ Republican Party has taken to using the slogan “We are the storm,” a formulation favored by QAnon, which the FBI considers a domestic terrorism threat. The “storm,” in QAnon’s parlance, is the coming day of deliverance when satanic pedophiles are to be arrested and executed.
In Arizona, the Republicans’ strongest potential Senate candidate in 2024 would be Doug Ducey, whose second and final term as governor ends in 2023. He, however, flatly says, “I’m not running.” Not wanting to be a senator is understandable. But why would Ducey even consider running after Arizona’s GOP recently censured him for emergency measures he has taken combating COVID-19?
Meanwhile, Trump, a mini-Achilles sulking in his Palm Beach tent, nurses his grievances, confident that he will be enlarged among Republicans when he is acquitted by the Senate. There, few Republicans are willing to enrage many constituents by voting to convict him for no better reason than that he is obviously guilty as charged.
The Constitution mandates: “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside.” Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did so in Trump’s first trial. Roberts has, however, decided not to do so in the next one, in which the president — note the definite article: “the” — is not on trial. Roberts is too judicious to say so, but his decision perhaps implies this about the person on trial: He’s just not worth it.