What If Democrats Have to Impeach the President?
Pelosi would rather avoid the fight. Mueller may make that impossible.
By Francis Wilkinson
November 25, 2018, 8:00 AM CST
Nancy Pelosi does not want to impeach President Donald Trump. The House Democratic leader, and likely next speaker of the House, has good reasons for avoiding that fight.
First, Republicans discredited impeachment when they used it to try to destroy President Bill Clinton for his White House misdeeds. The word “impeachment†used to conjure a righteous end to a crooked presidency. Now it connotes a rusty hatchet in the hand of Newt Gingrich.
Second, it’s going to be hard to shock Americans into thinking radical action — and impeachment is radical — is justified. Most Americans long ago came to understand that their president is not a fine person. For every American who says Trump is “trustworthy,†almost two say he isn’t. (And let’s face it: Some of those claiming to believe that Trump is trustworthy were probably MAGA partisans having fun at a pollster’s expense.)
Watergate was not the outcome that most Americans anticipated from Richard Nixon, who won the 1972 election in a glorious law ’n’ order landslide. But the tawdry machinations of the Trump administration seem to be pretty much in line with expectations. In 2016, only one-third of Americans expected Trump to set a high moral standard in the White House.
Perhaps a few of the less attentive students needed more time for the lessons to sink in — just 27 percent now say Trump sets a high moral standard, so it’s fallen slightly in two years. But most Americans seem to recognize that the founder of Trump University has little use for laws and none for ethics. They won’t be shocked to have their perceptions confirmed by special counsel Robert Mueller.
The political risks of impeachment, which include making Democrats look like so many Newts, are significant. The rewards of seeking to remove a tainted executive from office, especially when the Republican Senate will resist it, are dodgy at best. Instead, Democrats can use their new powers to highlight the most politically salient aspects of Trump’s corruption and incompetence without taking on the unique burdens of impeaching him. That seems like the easier way to go.
Unless Mueller makes the easy path hard.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-25/what-if-democrats-impeach-president-trump
