The Justified Price of Impeachment

Trump holding a newspaper reporting his acquittal. (Wikimedia Commons)

AUSTIN MAY: With President Trump shouting his acquittal from the rooftops, and Democrats in Congress gone silent in the aftermath, it seems the impeachment chapter of this presidency is at an end.

After hearing from House prosecutors over two weeks, the Senate voted 52-48 against the first article, abuse of power, and 53-47 against the second, obstruction of Congress.. Besides the lone aisle-crossing vote of Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, on Article I — indeed, the first senator ever to vote against a president of their own party — it was, as expected, a party-line procedure.

Interestingly, somehow, the magic of Teflon Don witnessed his highest approval numbers since inauguration during the final days of the Senate's impeachment hearing. Polls from both Gallup and Hill/HarrisX put him at 49%, his personal best. Within that, an impressive 94% of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing in the White House. Whether it stays or settles back to the norm of 43%, it is a great selling point for an uncertain electorate.

Congressional Democrats campaigned in 2018 in part on the need to exact oversight over a Republican White House and Congress; their 41-seat win in the House served as both a confirmation and call to action from moderate voters. Acquittal hurts their legitimacy, even if it affirms their efforts.

And so, in the aftermath of the president’s successful impeachment defense, it is useful to take a wider perspective. Was it worth it? Who really won this fight? Looking back to Bill Clinton, and Richard Nixon before him, the recent history of impeachment in the United States offers starkly contrasting lessons.

The Starr Report was released on September 9, 1998. Well-timed to boost Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, it made bold arguments for abuse of executive power, witness tampering, perjury, and obstruction of justice with salacious, sexually-explicit detail. And yet, two months later, optimistic Republicans condemning the president in their re-election campaigns across the country lost five seats in the House and saw stalemate in the Senate. This failure saw then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich lose his gavel.

The week after the midterms, impeachment ended with acquittal in the Senate. They voted 45-55 against a perjury charge and 50-50 (needing two-thirds, or 67) on against obstruction of justice. Clinton celebrated "record-high job approval" with 73% of Americans behind him. It seems, between both, escaping impeachment does indeed help improve popularity.

Then, we have the oxymoronic Nixon impeachment that wasn't, the only "successful" effort in American presidential history. With the House's Judiciary Committee adopting three articles of impeachment only a week prior, Nixon fled office in resignation once it became clear that congressional Republicans, his erstwhile and self-aware allies, would not defend his acquittal.

He was never formally impeached. There were no grand speeches on the floor of the House or Senate, no breathless news anchors sharing breaking reports of the process. Merely the start of a formal investigation by one committee and backroom dealings were enough to send a president that, two years prior had won 61% of the popular vote and every state except Massachusetts, fleeing to resignation.

All of which is to say: an impeachment campaign is like a well-planned war. Or, more specifically as Sun Tzu aptly put it, "Every battle is won before it’s ever fought." Trump's impeachment, from the outset, was a moonshot. A successful prosecution depended on swaying 20 steadfast Republican senators who have already crossed an immeasurable sea of Trumpian controversy. Sure, some expressed concern, expressed concern, or even expressed concern at Trump’s behavior…but the cost of crossing this party-popular president simply remained too high.

Democratic and Republican politicians, advisors, and campaign strategists are highly competent people despite Americans' misgivings. In launching the inquiry last October, Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew precisely the mountain she was climbing. Democratic politicians and activists alike had been chanting for impeachment since inauguration. Alongside Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., mindful that impeachment would almost certainly fail, chose to pursue a very narrow, highly-specific offense. They knew it would not pass through the Senate, that was not their audience. They were speaking to the American voter, to posterity. Trump, meanwhile, needed to glide over this speed bump on the way to a second term. They both achieved their aims.

Pursuing the Ukraine call was the best option available. To answer the demands of voters, to suffer minimal blowback, to strike even a glancing blow against Teflon Don, Democratic leadership can proudly say that they tried. Like Sisyphus rolling a boulder uphill, impeachment was more about the process — an attempt to maintain congressional legitimacy in the history books — than actually summiting this mountain.