A righteous impeachment

On Dec. 19, 1998, a Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach Bill Clinton, judging that lying under oath about a consensual affair warranted his removal from office. In this column the day after, we wrote: “The stain will live for centuries…That is what Republicans have wrought on the narrowest of party-line votes over some lies about a sexual affair. We damn them today. History will damn them forever.”

On Dec. 18, 2019, a Democratic-controlled House voted to impeach Donald Trump, judging that a president’s attempt to coerce a foreign power into announcing an investigation into a domestic political foe, then trying to cover it up, merits his removal from office.

This is the proper judgment, one that the Senate will whistle past but that history will affirm as righteous.

No, it doesn’t help that not a single Republican

had the spine to break rank and declare it disqualifying when a president invites foreign interference in the next election. Having blinded themselves to severe offenses that clearly qualify as the types of “high crimes and misdemeanors” referenced by the Founders, they then have the gall to blast the impeachment as unacceptably partisan.

Um, it’s only partisan because they themselves mindlessly, reflexively refuse to see what is obvious.

Impeachment is a statement of values. Refusing to impeach would have been its own statement, that the most powerful officeholder in the land can concoct a scheme to distort the will of Congress and strongarm a vulnerable ally to smear an American citizen, essentially to generate an in-kind campaign donation.

That’s what Republicans said in unison Wednesday. We conclude as our editorial of 21 years ago concluded: “It cannot be undone.”