Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
Whether to impeach President Donald Trump, which seemed clear cut to me only a week ago, has gotten muddier since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week that impeachment inquiries would begin.
If the July conversation between Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the new president of the Ukraine, is the issue on which impeachment rests, however, it stands on wobbly legs.
Anyone who has been pressured by a manipulative boss knows what was going on in that conversation.
Amid the flattery each laid on the other as thick as the filling in a double Oreo cookie, it is obvious that Trump applied a velvet bludgeon to persuade Zelensky to investigate (that is, to find or invent dirt on) Joe Biden, Trump’s most likely Democratic rival, as a condition for military to stave off Russian expansion.
It would be easy, however, for Republicans to plant reasonable doubt about Trump’s intent in the exchange. There is ample justification on the surface to call it a friendly conversation between closely allied heads of state.
Further muddying the issue is the matter Trump wanted the Ukraine to “investigate.”
Biden’s son Hunter was sitting on the board of directors of a Ukrainian natural gas company in 2014 when then-Vice President Joe Biden called on the Ukraine to dismiss a prosecutor who was investigating that company, which shows two glaring faults for the Bidens.
First, Hunter should have known $50,000 a month to sit on a corporate board in a country as politically sensitive as the Ukraine was too good to be true without some hefty strings attached that would connect to his dad.
U.S. corporate board members generally make less than that per year for attending four meetings a year to rubber-stamp the chief executive officer.
Second, despite world opinion against the prosecutor, Joe Biden’s call to fire somebody investigating his own son’s company would always be questionable.
My theory on Pelosi’s change of mind is that the impeachment threat may be Congress’ only real weapon to counter the president’s recent unconstitutional dismissals of Congress.
With the Senate Republican majority chained to Trump’s base, Trump violates constitutional norms with impunity.
Congress — Republicans, too, whether or not they realize it — cannot allow this if the nation is to continue with three co-equal branches of government.
Maybe, a big maybe, an impeachment threat will bring some concessions.
Pelosi, a master of political survival, did not change her mind without carefully weighing risks and benefits.
She knows the failure of a highly theatrical impeachment effort could make Democrats look hysterical and ridiculous, which could boost sympathy votes for Trump, even if he is a name-calling, finger-pointing playground bully who is also the first to whimper when he is attacked.
If Democrats can handle the impeachment inquiry judiciously, however, the proceedings could expose the president’s most craven motives to enough voters to defeat Trump in 2020.
That would mean increasing the Democrats’ 2016 popular vote majority to the 5 million-vote margin needed to overcome the Electoral College’s ability to nullify the popular vote.
What a gamble it is. I just hope Pelosi is as wise in this move as I think she is.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at: