Here we are at the start of the third round of impeachment talk, and it is a good question whether anything will come out of it when nothing came of it in its previous iterations. First there was the Mueller investigation into connections between Trump and the Russians during 2015 and 2016. Mueller got so tied up in legalities that he couldn’t conclude that the communications between the Russians and the Trump camp amounted to a conspiracy because there was no proof of criminal intent, which is a version of what I would call the clown defense. Trump is such a clown that he doesn’t know he is entering a conspiracy only that he is acting conspiratorially and then can deny it was malevolent because he goes public with what others would try to hide. He asked Russia at a public rally to go after Hillary’s emails and a few days later Wikileaks released a lot of information. So how could Trump be conspiring right in front of us? He is a fool rather than someone like Nixon, who worked hard to cover up what he knew to be wrong conduct on his part even if it were warranted by his sense that both political parties did it.
The second burst of talk was about what Trump was doing at the border. Separating parents from their children was a step too far. It is embarrassing for the United States to engage in such unhumanitarian behavior and it shouldn’t have to put up with a President who acts out of malice, himself saying that the separations would act as a deterrence and so keep foreigners from our southern border. And so, yes, he is malicious and ugly, but that is the sort of person the people elected. He hadn’t fooled anyone. This is the way he was back to his early Birther days and in his announcement of himself as a candidate for President when he said that Mexicans crossing our borders were rapists and drug dealers. The question remains whether someone can be impeached for being both a fool and very mean. But that burst of talk died down when the numbers approaching the border dropped, partly because of better enforcement, partly because of seasonal fluctuations.
Now we have a third set of impeachment talking points all of which center, as Pelosi has made clear, around the plan by Trump, through such intermediaries as Rudy Guiliani, to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden and his family. Kelley Conway says on PBS on the evening the whistleblower document breaks that the 2020 campaign was not invoked in the now notorious phone call between Zelensky and Trump. But Trump did mention Biden and only Biden as a possible subject for Ukranian investigation. He could easily enough have mentioned Biden as part of a list of people for the Ukranians to look into, but Trump is, after all, a clown, and so should not be expected to be that clever in covering up his mischievous intent. Instead, his defenders just suggest that there is nothing wrong in soliciting--really. extorting--help from a foreign power for his domestic political interests. His Justice Department says, after all, that there was nothing of value that was being sought, as if help in a political campaign is not obviously of value. Again, lawyers tangle themselves up in verbal jousts that amount to nothing.
The important point, however, is that Democrats have to continually rev up the talk, try to gin up the rhetoric, so as to make people take these antics seriously, because they are dealing with a person that even his supporters don’t take seriously, even if they did vote for him, because they know he goes in for flamboyant and shady carryings on, and can’t be held accountable for those because, as is the case with his treatment of women or his remarks about the press, he is, after all, just a clown, and so satisfies our need for the outrageous that appeals to our worst feelings, or at least the worst feelings of some, and so has entertainment value, even if you don’t particularly like him as a person and find an excuse for using him as a way to vent untoward feelings by appealing to the fact that he delivers on Supreme Court appointments even if he has never delivered on abortion or other social issues. He hasn’t repealed Obamacare or brought back jobs or helped farmers.
So how do you deal with such a slippery character, how do you get traction on an issue of immense importance, make it appreciated as an issue of great importance, so as to go ahead with the solemnity of an impeachment? Remember back to some twenty years ago when a comic situation, that a President of the United States dallied with an aggressive intern, was turned into the high rhetoric of politics by people such as Lindsey Graham, then one of the House Managers of the trial of Bill Clinton in the Senate, and now something of an elder statesman who so prizes cozying up to Trump that he will defend him whatever. So how can we take the President seriously enough to impeach much less convict him when everybody knows he is such a clown that all it takes is a little flattery to get him on your side? Zelensky is not a fool and he learned quickly enough that saying what was wanted of him was what was necessary for him to get his way. Whether he would have gone through with an investigation of Hunter Biden is another question. He could have just played around with Guiliani, another clown, until Trump’s term ran out. When a clown is so transparently so as Trump is, how is it possible to turn him into a villain rather than think of him as an unruly child? It just does not compute.
The Democrats try to get this moment taken seriously by pointing to the pressure Ukraine is under from Russia. The Ukraine government needed hand held anti-tank missiles to hold off a Russian invasion that could happen at any moment. But that is a stretch. The lines between the two sides in Ukraine have stabilized and Obama was right to point out to Putin that sooner or later there would have to be negotiations to settle their differences, probably by ceding the Russian favoring eastern part of the country to Moscow. It is all part of the lingering breakup of the Soviet Union, the borders of eastern Europe still not settled with the new and never westernized Russia.
So how to disarm Trump? I still wish we had Obama around. He knew how to get Trump riled up by pointing out how he was a clown and not a serious person. His humiliation of Trump at a correspondent’s dinner with Trump in the audience, not at all enjoying being roasted, may have been what got Trump to run in the first place, so deep was his hatred of Obama, and it can’t be said that Obama, the incumbent President, belittling Trump was not proper payback to someone who had, after all, been the spirit and voice of the Birther campaign, which was, after all, only a very thinly disguised appeal to racism.
Do any of the Democratic candidates have a touch light enough to portray Trump as a clown? I think Bernie would get flustered by Trump attacking him as a Venezuelan Socialist when Bernie is, as he says himself, a Canadian or Scandinavian Socialist. I prefer Biden’s policies to those of the others but I don't know if he is any longer fast enough on his feet to dance around Trump’s insults and jab him until he falls. Elizabeth Warren, though I don’t like most of her policy emphases, such as on an unconstitutional wealth tax and on hamstringing the one percent when what we need to do is to tax them enough to pay for the infrastructure and educational and health programs that we need, is nonetheless quick enough and glib enough and humorous enough to make Trump look foolish. But understand my overall position. There are still Blue Dog Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who often sides with the Republicans on issues. There used to be “yellow dog” Democrats who would vote for a yellow dog if that were the Democratic nominee. Well, I consider myself a “two headed chicken” Democrat. I would vote for a two headed chicken if it secured the Democratic nomination just to get Trump out of the White House. That is how bad he is.
That is not the route to impeachment though even if impeachment is just a ploy to shame the President so that he is more vulnerable to electoral defeat. Pelosi has to try to get people to take him seriously enough as a villain. She has her work cut out for her. Yet her work is necessary because there is no reason not to think that one of Trump’s foolish escapades will get us into a shooting war. Yes, he has surrendered to North Korea and, as of these past few weeks, to the Iranians, we not responding to Iran’s muscle against Saudi Arabia so as to show that the U. S. should not take Iran lightly. And a long time ago and still for reasons unexplained, Trump tugs at his forelock when in the presence of Putin, but Trump did nearly get us into a war with Venezuela and we are saved from his impulsiveness only by his cowardice: he will not push a button, any button. So Pelosi is right to think that impeachment proceedings are urgent so as to forestall what this unhinged person might do, but I think we had best rely on the Democratic candidate to puncture the Trump balloon. Mueller took two years to try to connect the dots in a conspiracy and failed to do so but here the evidence is out in the open in that phone call with Zelensky, the President asking a favor that is illegal and shameful. The wrong is very clear-cut even if Trump’s apologists will say it was just Trump acting like Trump: talking big but not really meaning anything really bad, just giving in to his conspiratorial nature. But he, after all, was the person who ran for President and so he has to be treated as a responsible person even if he is not one.