we can do better, america!
Opinion for Thomas by Ben Everidge
celebrating our founding principles …
Republicans believe William Jefferson Clinton should have been convicted in his 1998-1999 impeachment trial, while Democrats believe Donald John Trump should have been convicted in his trial ended earlier this year - 2020.
Both sides occasionally had merit in their arguments but missed the more significant point. What is in America’s best interests first? Not what is in their own party’s interests, foremost.
Blocking all witnesses from testifying in the latest Senate trial by largely partisan vote when evidence and circumstance dictated need was an obvious indicator that the American government is truly broken.
Coupled with the Senate Majority Leader’s ridiculous attack on the credibility of Chief Justice John Roberts while impartially conducting the trial, echoing a similar incredible attack by an opposing party’s leading presidential candidate, is unnerving to Americans who want to know the truth.
Is their president a crook?
Are we a democracy? A republic? A dictatorship or an emerging kingdom, as alleged by President Trump’s countless detractors?
The canary in the Pennsylvania, Independence & Constitution Avenues coal mine died quickly but painfully; it can now be reported.
The question to consider is: is this break in capable governing permanently irreparable?
Before delving deeper into this quagmire, let’s start here by calling the two major political parties finally, even when it comes to acquitting their impeached presidents, on sometimes spurious grounds.
In the interim, however, please, somebody take 45’s Twitter account away from him, pronto! Disparaging name-calling and reputationally damaging mudslinging have no place in our civil society and are undeniably beneath the dignity of any American president. Donald Trump is arguably not adhering to the ideal being peddled by his White House, “Be Best.”
To restore American democracy to what it was before these political fiascos derailed effective governing in the United States and to move forward with legitimate lawmaking that can solve real problems for real people, we need to fix them as soon as possible and once and for all, a couple of the core transgressions that led us to where we stand as a nation today.
Let’s demand that both sides get on with the business of the nation and immediately halt the personally destructive tit-for-tat retributions each is presently engaged in on an hourly basis.
Absent a valid impeachment trial with fact witnesses, the 2020 election will hopefully be left to determine what America thinks about how the impeachment trial was or was not conducted by the Democrats and the Republicans, the House impeachment managers, and the President’s legal team.
This election season can and will serve as the next able bellwether indicator on whether or not it is permissible for an American president, any president, to consistently lie to the American voter or subvert the co-equal power of Congress and the Judiciary without consequences. That effort begins to unfold formally on Monday evening in the Iowa caucuses. So, let’s get on with it!
The new priority before us is to address politically paralyzing issues from the trials we have endured through three impeachment inquiries and two complete trials in as many generations:
Is it truly a crime worth removing a president when that president knowingly lies under oath or affirmation? (Clinton on Monica or Whitewater and Trump under his many corporate loan documents.)
Is it a crime to financially benefit from revenue derived from the federal government while also serving as a federal government member? (Trump International Hotel Washington DC and Mar-a-Lago Florida.)
Is it a crime to use payments during an election cycle to bury personal indiscretions? (Porn star Stormy Daniels, Playboy playmate Karen McDougal, and convicted Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen on the October 2016 $130,000 payment to Daniels denied in an April 2018 Air Force One press gaggle by President Trump.)
Is diverting congressionally appropriated authorizations for partisan political purposes a crime? (The Ukraine security aid in their war against Russia in exchange for a favor on opponent Joe Biden and his family.)
Is it a crime to divert congressionally appropriated authorizations for unrelated projects not approved by Congress and the President? (For example, The U.S.-Mexican border wall.)
Is it a crime for an American president to solicit foreign interference in U.S. elections for personal advantage in U.S. elections? (American intelligence has confirmed Russia interfered in the 2016 election. President Trump has openly invited Russia, China, and Ukraine to intervene in the 2020 election.)
Should presidents be required to release a reasonable number of annual tax returns to serve in office? (Presidential tax returns are automatically audited annually. President Trump has refused to release his tax returns since he was elected, using the justification that his tax returns are under audit. It has been alleged that he funded his company through Russian bank financing.)
Can presidents of the United States be indicted like every other citizen while in office when they have committed crimes? (Presidents Nixon, Clinton, and Trump, for instance.
When does Executive Authority prevail if ignoring duly authorized congressional oversight? The threat related to interviewing Ambassador John Bolton, for example.)
Are congressional subpoenas enforceable under a penalty when a president’s Department of Justice prefers not to enforce them? (The White House Chief of Staff, the Secretary of State, the Office of Management and Budget, the Secretary of Energy, Trump’s attorney, and unofficial Ukraine emissary Rudy Giuliani, et al.)
Should the Electoral College be replaced with the popular vote? (President Trump won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote in 2016.)
Should immediate family members of a president be barred from serving in official federal capacities while earning money from other sources? (White House special assistants such as daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.)
When is a conflict of interest for a member of Congress to participate in an impeachment inquiry or trial? (The Senate Majority Leader’s wife worked for the impeachment subject. Four candidates to replace the impeached president are running for his seat. Numerous members of the Senate openly declared that they were not impartial jurors despite taking a constitutional oath to do otherwise.)
Article VI, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution states in no uncertain terms that members of Congress and the executive “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”
We know from the public record that this binding oath was knowingly ignored – and even directly violated - by the President and members of both parties, including the Senate Majority Leader, who also ignored the Oath administered by the Chief Justice to be an impartial juror in President Trump’s impeachment trial.
Should the Chief Justice have intervened in this charade of a trial, knowing that members of the United States Senate knowingly lied under oath, thus committing a constitutional crime in his presence? If lying under oath was an impeachable transgression for Bill Clinton, should it also be a crime for Mitch McConnell and his gang?
The easy answer to these controversies is for Congress to take back its constitutional war powers, reassert its constitutional budgetary authority, make these issues of criminal intent apparent crimes, and let the courts decide the balance. We can call it the Presidential Accountability & Ethical Performance Act of 2020, 2021, 2022, or whenever.
The sooner, the better.
Republican, Democrat, or Independent actors should not matter. We have had an impeached Democrat and a Republican now in the past two decades alone, so both parties have done the dirty deed. Don’t they know that we are tied to this?
It is incumbent on us all to find a way for the Supreme Court to rule on these vexing violations so that the frequency of presidential impeachments subside in the years and decades ahead for the good of America herself. Russian Supreme Leader Vladimir Putin has got to be laughing at this latest episode in a not-so-funny reality show performance. Not a missile had to be fired to undermine the legitimacy of the USA among her voters as well as her confused allies.
Perhaps an enterprising law firm might be able to help the average troubled and affronted American by taking this broken Constitutional law in the Senate and enlisting the help of the third co-equal branch of government in getting the answers we have long needed when impeached presidents have successfully combated the will of the American public. Remember, according to recent polls, three out of four Americans wanted the Senate to call witnesses in this mystery installment of “As the Impeachments Roll.”
It should also go without saying that The Washington Post’s much-discussed banner tagline is not the empty thought some foolishly dismiss. On the contrary, democracy will die in darkness, and we all know it.
We have entered a very dark period in our nation’s political life. Morning in America has yielded to what appears to be Dusk in America. Or is it Mourning in America, as one noted anti-Trump group calls it?
The road back to American democracy as we knew it starts as it always did with, “We, the People of the United States, to form a perfect Union…”
It’s a revolutionary concept that we have fought before and won.
We can do better, America!