Why this impeachment matters
By nearly every standard we can measure in a democracy, President Trump will leave office next week as a disastrous failure. His rejection by a broad swath of society following last week’s attempted coup is a cautionary tale to all of us — a warning about what happens when we turn power over to people who are unprepared, unprincipled and utterly unfit for high office.
The president’s approval ratings, never very high, have crashed, falling about 10 points since the deadly attack on the Capitol by a mob carrying Trump banners. More than six in 10 voters disapprove of the president’s performance, according to a poll by Politico, echoing the findings of other surveys.
“Instead of going out as a popular figure, Trump is set to join George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon as presidents who exited with significant majorities disapproving of their job performance,” Politico notes. “He is poised to go down as one of the most unpopular presidents upon leaving office.”
Trump took much of the Republican Party over the cliff with him. Along with the White House, the GOP under Trump lost majorities in the House and the Senate. Only 40% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters want Trump to run again in 2024.
The business community decisively turned on Trump after the attack on the Capitol, with a speed and decisiveness sadly lacking in our political institutions. The National Association of Manufacturers publicly asked Vice President Mike Pence to convene the cabinet and remove Trump from power by invoking the 25th Amendment provisions governing what to do about a president who is incapable of handling the duties of office.
Randall Lane, the editor of Forbes Magazine, published a remarkable warning to businesses not to hire any of the top spokespeople who served in the Trump White House.
“Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie,” Lane wrote. “We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet.”
There won’t be many more Trump tweets, of course, since the platform suspended his account, citing Trump messages that the company deemed “highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Other digital platforms that have banned or restricted Trump include Twitch, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, TikTok, Discord and Pinterest. It reflects a consensus that the attack on the Capitol — a brazen attempt to overturn the result of the election Trump lost — was one outrage too many.
“This goes beyond merely refusing to concede defeat,” said the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which called on the president to resign. “In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable.”
For perspective, I spoke with presidential historian Douglas Brinkley the day before the impeachment (our full conversation is online at “You Decide,” my podcast).
“There’s no question —the mob in Washington is us, in some way. That type of behavior and character and thinking has been with us from the beginning,” Brinkley told me. “After all, there’s a cost to pay for slavery, for being slave-owners, for Jim Crow, for hatred of African-Americans and Native American genocide, the disdaining of Mexican-Americans. I mean, there’s a cost for it — and the good news is the country is actually changing. I mean, the very day of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, you saw Georgia electing two Democrats, both progressive, one African-American, one Jewish American. Things are changing.”
Brinkley also told me a remarkable anecdote about the nature of Donald Trump.
“I once met President Trump working with CNN right after he won the election. I talked with him at Mar-a-Lago and he told me he had never read a book of American history,” Brinkley said. “I was trying to help him out. I said, you must have read a children’s book of history, a biography of Lincoln as a kid, just to make it through the school system. He said, ‘Oh no, I’ve never read it.’ ‘Books are your thing,’ is what he said. ‘That’s not my thing. I operate out of the gut.’ “
The takehome message, said Brinkley, is that Trump was profoundly ignorant of the rules, history and traditions of the government we elected him to lead.
“He went on to say that he’s a visual person, that he takes in history from the television, which he strictly watches,” Brinkley recalled. “And so he has a better understanding of Kennedy, Reagan, Nixon, things that he lived through — but nothing past that.”
The next presidential election is in 48 months. Choose wisely, America.