Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Like many of you, I had a chance to watch some of the live Impeachment hearings today. When was the last time we have witnessed such a show at the very pinnacle of public venues for an American political show-down? A generation has passed since the President Bill Clinton – Monica Lewinsky “Blue Dress” / “Lying Under Oath” scandal. A generation before that saw the resignation of President Richard Nixon due to Watergate.
Should we expect this kind of sensational political spectacle every generation or so? Perhaps this is the expression of a kind of post-modern loosening of a social safety valve, something ultra-divisive politics in the United States somehow “needs” in order to let off pent up steam.
On social media, the partisan camps have drawn hard lines. Many celebrate the proceedings under hashtags such as #ImpeachmentEve or #TriggerDonaldTrumpJr. They tweet about social, legal, gender, moral, historical, racial, cultural and personal justice. They reassure each other that President Trump won the 2016 election because Russian President Vladimir Putin influenced people against Hillary Clinton.
Others remain convinced there is a deep state conspiracy against the President, that “real” Americans will defend him on the basis of patriotism, conservative values and belief in an America-First approach to foreign and domestic policy. They believe in the President’s motto, Make America Great Again, and they see the Impeachment Hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives as the hundredth iteration of Democrats to attempt to redo the 2016 Presidential Election.
The touchstone of this political conflict is Ukraine. I have Ukrainian friends. I remember in 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, some of them told me that this would never stand because the United States and its allies would declare war on Russia. At the time, a time of different presidents, Barack Obama in the U.S. and Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, I thought that would be a crazy idea.
Open war with Russia, with its perennial risk of nuclear annihilation and planetwide human extinction, because of an island in the Black Sea populated mostly by Russian people who would now become part of Russia (as they had been for hundreds of years) once again? I refused to believe this could happen. I wondered how many Americans would be able to identify the location of Sevastopol on a world map, say within 5,000 miles.
Needless to say, President Obama did not declare war on Russia. The U.S. and Europe protested. They implemented sanctions. They spoke against Putin’s territorial ambitions. They increased funding for military aid to Ukraine. But no war was declared. Five years later, war has still not been declared.
Instead we have Impeachment Hearings because President Trump threatened to withhold U.S. military aid unless the Ukrainian government investigated problems with corruption. Forget the fact that Ukraine has an impressive record on this. Skip over the history that Ukrainian oligarchs have funded politicians from both American political parties during the past decade. Disregard the fact that the Obama administration also threatened to withhold aid until corruption was investigated.
This is different. The President is Donald Trump, and the investigation is about business dealings of the family of his possible 2020 political opponent, Joe Biden. Does a duly elected, sitting President have the right to do this? Can a president withdraw an ambassador to another nation (Marie Yovanovitch) as he pleases, hold up military funding or send a plenipotentiary (Rudy Giuliani) to forward his agenda? Who decides American foreign policy? If it is not to be the President, should it be instead his political opponents controlling one of the branches of Congress?
Democrats in the House of Representatives will presumably vote to impeach. Republicans in the Senate are equally likely to conclude that he should not be removed from office. In other words, we will have had much ado about nothing. Partisans on both sides can claim that their side did not lose, and yet who will have won?
By the time the impeachment process is over, America will be on the eve of the next presidential election. After all the steam of impeachment has been released, perhaps Americans will once again be able to focus on economic growth or freedom or peace. Love may be the opposite of hatred, but the antidote to hate is tolerance.
Is impeachment the path every generation needs to travel in order to get the animosity out of their system? Tomorrow morning, live coverage of Day 2 of the House Impeachment Hearings begins. Stay tuned, for if we cannot be persuaded to love our neighbors, we had better relearn how to tolerate them.
_______________________
Readers are invited to visit jscotthardin.com. Thank you for your support of the Up Your Dialogue podcast, a place where two lenses combine with respect and encouragement to learn and explore our world and beyond.