And So it Goes...

All the fire and fury of the House majority was wrapped up and sent to the Senate under the care and guidance of the Impeachment Managers.  They were supported by all the resources of the Speaker of the House as well as the Senate minority party and such powerhouses of legal wit and wisdom as Rachal Maddow and the folks at CNN. 

At the same time, President Trump’s legal team was made up of practicing lawyers, law professors, and a slew of House Republicans to cover social media and the broadcast news. 

For three full days, the House Managers laid out what they described as an overwhelming case of abuse of power and obstruction of the House investigation into the President.  In their three days of opening statements, they claimed again and again the evidence was overwhelming and beyond dispute, and it may have been if you a) are able, as Adam Schiff suggests, we can read the President’s mind, and b) ignore the fact what the President did has been done by almost all Presidents before him.  They showed videos of witnesses they interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee which led to their overwhelming and beyond dispute evidence of guilt.  At their best none of the witnesses whose testimony was shown to the Senate had direct knowledge of Presidential words or motives during his conversations with the Ukrainian President.  The closest they got was the transcript released by the White House.

  While they were doing this the Democratic Party, its media allies, and all the Democratic politicians that could jump in front of a camera were busy lobbying anyone who would listen the only way to have a “fair” trial was for the Senate to bring in witnesses the House didn’t interview to testify with regards to the President’s guilt because as mere Representatives of the people they didn’t have the power to force the President to cooperate with their investigation in the manner they wanted.

Remarkably, although not unexpected, a rumor of some new “truths” coming from the President’s advisors found their way into the mainstream media just in time to try and help them make their case.  Of course, these were from anonymous sources who had seen something in a manuscript that was not yet approved for publication.  Therefore, according to the Senate minority leader and his Democratic colleagues, the House Managers, and a Republican Senator or two they should call those witnesses the House Managers wanted. 

The kicker was the defense pointed out this could drag the trial on for weeks (and perhaps months) since they would demand witnesses they wanted should be called as well.  The also pointed out in the House’s investigation only the majority got to decide which witnesses would be asked to testify regarding the whistleblower’s complaint that allegedly began this whole affair. The defense took about half the time as the politicians from the House in their opening statements, for despite the assertions by the House Managers and Democratic Senators the President should prove his innocence that is not the way justice works in the United States.

In the public negotiation that went on through the question time, the House Managers attempted to make the Chief Justice the arbitrator of who would be called and who wouldn’t as well as whether or not the Chief Justice would cast the deciding vote if there was a tie.  The defense rejected this as a role for the Chief Justice.  The Chief Justice himself rejected the idea he would be the deciding vote in a tie.  As he pointed out a tie vote in the Senate traditionally means the vote fails.  Then came Senator Elizabeth Warren who weighted in and asked the managers to explain how the reputation of the Chief Justice and the SCOTUS would be destroyed forever if he didn’t go along with this plan and do what the Democrats proposed.  Thankfully, this pissed of just enough Senators to make sure he wouldn’t be put into that role.

Now that the Senate has voted not to do what the House couldn’t be bothered with, we will see all the expected outrage from the political left over how those evil Republicans have destroyed the America we love, and how they are keeping a corrupt President in power despite the will of the people (as expressed in some poll of about 1500 randomly selected individuals).

I believe this is playing out pretty much like I thought it would here.  Of course, all those who’ve invested so much emotional capital in attempting to correct America’s mistake of 2016 will come online to explain how the Senate has failed in its responsibility because of those nasty Republicans.  I’d point to this one tweet from Hillary Clinton as capturing the irony lost on those who live their lives inside an emotionally inflated political bubble.

If we flashback a mere 21 years ago we probably saw Republicans saying the same things, and if we use that trial as the modern benchmark we see some notable similarities, but it is really the difference in the House’s approach that stands out for me.

For example, as much as the Republicans may have disliked President Clinton I don’t recall a nearly continuous drumbeat of unproven accusations made by sitting members of the House following Clinton’s reelection.  With Trump -- Representatives Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff and others (e.g. Maxine Waters) have had their faces plastered on TV since January 2017 talking about all the dirt they have on this President and calling for his impeachment.  I guess the question should have been asked, why wasn’t all that (the stuff they were bragging about having) included in the two Bills of Impeachment the House Democrats finally settled on?

The next thing within the House process was the independent counsel (Ken Star) actually found evidence the President had obstructed justice (as defined by the judicial system and not the politicians) before the Speaker and the House authorized the committees to begin an impeachment investigation.  In Trump’s case, the independent counsel found no such criminal activity and the investigations by the committees started before any such authorization.  The House Managers' explanation was the only the House had the authority to establish or question the process used by the House.  Therefore, under current House rules, they didn’t need authorization by the full body to do whatever the committee chairs wanted to do.

Then we come to actual Bills of Impeachment.  In the Clinton affair, the Judicial committee (voting along party lines) sent four articles to the full house for a vote.  Of those four articles two were for perjury in two cases, a third was obstruction of justice, and the fourth was an abuse of power.  In those votes, there was at least a small degree of bipartisanship with significant numbers of Republicans joining Democrats to defeat two of the four articles, and a small number of Democrats joining Republicans on the articles they did adopt.  We can’t say the same thing this time around.  No Republicans voted to impeach and a few Democrats broke with their party to either not vote or to reject the articles.  This was clearly a partisan vote, just as it had been in the committee processes.

Finally, we come to the issue of witnesses in the Senate trial.  Clearly, the Democrat’s whole spin on this is the Senate absolutely had subpoena witnesses to get to the “truth” of the matter.  The public spin is you can’t have a fair trial without witnesses and direct testimony.  How could a Senator make an informed decision if they didn’t couldn’t get the real dirt on the accused?  As we know the House Managers failed in their arguments for witnesses, again strictly along party lines, but let’s review the whole idea of witnesses as they were used in the Clinton trial.

There was talk of witnesses in the Clinton trial, although at the end of the day all the Senators got were some video depositions (decided on by a 70-30 vote) and the only witnesses interviewed for those depositions were witnesses who had been identified as key players in the Star investigation and the House had already interviewed or had been identified as witnesses as part of their pre-impeachment investigation.

Then we have the manner of presentation.  I wonder what the House Managers hoped to gain as they framed their talking points with ad hominem attacks of the defense counsels and Republican Senators who may disagree with their view the House had overwhelming evidence of “High Crimes and Misdemeanors.”  On the lighter side, it appears House Manager Schiff is unable to actually present evidence without telling everyone what was inside someone else’s head when they did or said something.  In such a partisan gathering that approach played well with 47 Senators, and less well with the rest.  This became especially clear during the 18 hours of questioning. 

Now, after the Senate voted 49 to 51 not to demand witnesses and clean up the flaws of the House’s case all that is left is for the losers to spin this as a failure of our Senate and the Republic.  Of course, they do this to keep their base enraged over those “other guys” in the GOP because anyone who disagrees with their views of the role of government is an illiterate, racist, Nazi-Capitalist protecting the criminal in the White House.  The drama will continue, perhaps unabated, until a Democrat once again sits in the White House, but then wasn’t this whole impeachment just one act in the political Kabuki that has been going on from the time the Trump was elected?

And so, it goes.