The Trial
There were seven Republican Senators who understood what was clearly being debated during President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. They recognized that when senators sit during an impeachment trial, he/she is acting as a juror in a case being presented to them. Their job is to weigh all the evidence that is presented to them and not evidence that they believe existed but was not presented to them. The Senator must consider the law as instructed by the judge (in this case their peers) and not their interpretation of what they believe to be the law. Then they vote on the case.
The 100 senators assembled to consider whether to convict Donald Trump did precisely that, with one fundamental difference. They had voted before hearing the facts as a jury, that former President Donald Trump could be tried despite the fact that he was no longer in office. This vote established that the trial of Donald Trump was the ruling of the Senate. This Senate vote was the same as accepting the ruling of a Judge as to the law to be applied in a case; albeit that this was a political case. The fact was that among the 43 Republican Senators, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the argument was made that the Senate could not try a former President. The acted despite the fact that a majority of the Senate had voted that it could try him.
It is a long-established understanding that the act of impeachment and trial are political acts undertaken by one branch of the Government against a second branch. The actions taken in the Congress are not analogous to those in a court room. The U.S. Senate proceeded in this trial to act as a Court in some regard and not in others, making a sad farce of a very serious proceeding. The outcome was not surprising but Donald Trump succeeded in striking another blow against the very Republic he had sworn to protect and defend.
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The Lessons
1.The clearest lesson from the impeachment trial of Donald Trump is that Congress will never remove any President from office by two-thirds vote of the Senate. Presidents Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump (twice) were impeached but not removed from office by a two-thirds vote of the Senate. President Richard Nixon resigned from office even before he was impeached when his Senate headcounters told him what the inevitable vote would be. The threshold for actual removeable from office of a President is just too high a political reach. The Founding Fathers wanted to make it difficult to remove a President. Donald Trump, despite an overwhelming array of evidence, proved that presidents never likely will be removed.
2. The Republican Party recognizes now that it is at a real crossroads. The party’s future is clearly polarized between Trump’s MAGA right wing and a conservative/moderate party. The 2022 Republican primary voters will be the next test for the GOP, although Virginia and New Jersey have gubernatorial races in 2021.
Already in the first half of the 19th Century the major opposition party to the old Democratic Party were the Whigs. They broke away in 1854 over the issue of whether to permit slavery in the new territories, with the Northern Whigs leaving the Whig Party and joining the anti-slavery Republican Party in response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
It is unclear how deep the breach might become within the Republican Party today, but former President Trump’s followers at this point seem prepared to follow him into a new party if necessary. The test for Senator McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is whether they will follow Trump in his determined path to regain power, or will they seek to lead the Republicans back from the abyss.
3. President Joe Biden has remained remarkably focused and unflappable throughout his first month in office despite the enormous distractions occurring at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. He is absolutely determined to have his Administration gain control of the pandemic as soon as possible, to have people vaccinated as rapidly as possible, and to rebuild the economy as quickly as possible. At the same time he wants to return America’s schoolchildren back into the classroom following the guidance of his medical team.
By the time President Biden delivers his State of the Union Address—tentatively scheduled for February 23—he is determined to demonstrate to the country that proper governance has returned to the country. All the dramatic and sexier issues as well as most foreign policy questions have been kept out of the limelight as Biden demonstrates how Washington is supposed to run. Early polls suggest that he is receiving wide support for his operating style.
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