I have posted my notes that I used to record this podcast. This is not well-developed prose. It’s just notes. If you’re looking for H.L. Mencken quality, you’ve come to the wrong place!

I am aggressively belligerently ambivalent about the impeachment of Donald J Trump. There are two reasons for my aggressive belligerent ambivalence.

First both sides of the impeachment debate have rational arguments.

Second both sides are motivated by the quest to get and keep power and not by rational arguments.

Let’s start with the rational arguments. First of all,

1. Impeach and remove: Trump used the power of the presidency to get a foreign power to investigate his political opponent, or at least he tried to
   1. Even if you contend that there was/is corruption in Ukraine, no one really believes that Trump is an anti-corruption crusader. Only the most partisanly blind observer truly thinks that Trump was deeply concerned about the corruption in Ukraine and—as luck would have it—it just so happens that the greatest political threat at the time to Trump’s reelection was at the center of the corruption.
   2. This is one of the biggest problems with having an untrustworthy character in the oval office: we can never trust his motivations. I can live with a leader who gets it wrong sometimes. Our leaders are human and fallible.
      1. What is a lot harder to stomach is that, when a leader gets it wrong, I can’t give that leader the benefit of the doubt. The safer assumption is that the wrong decision was made because the leader was looking out for himself and no one else.
2. Do not impeach/do not remove: it is entirely reasonable to say that Trump has the absolute right under current law to investigate corruption wherever he believes it exists, and if it just so happens that the investigation helps him politically.
   1. Consider the contrary: should we prohibit all investigations that are incidentally to the president’s political advantage? Is that not a blank check to the party out of power to engage in corrupt behavior?
3. And why limit the principle to the power to investigate? Should we also for example prohibit a president from say bombing Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20, 1998—as, of course, a randomly selected hypothetical example—if that bombing would distract the public from a breaking scandal involving the president himself?
4. It is also reasonable to say that, while the president shouldn’t have done what he did with respect to Ukraine it doesn’t warrant impeachment and removal. Look if we impeach and remove every time a president does something a bit over the line, we’re going to just have everyone running for vice president and picking a running mate who will be at the top of the ticket as the sacrificial impeachment lamb.
5. Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane:
   1. FDR put people in internment camps without Congressional approval or due process. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/roosevelt-ushers-in-japanese-american-internment
   2. JFK, through his brother and attorney general Robert, sent out FBI agents to invade reporters’ homes in the middle of the night to get information about the steel industry raising prices. He threatened to sic the IRS on them to audit personal and government accounts if they didn’t comply with his demands. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/jfks-dangerous-playbook-for-trump-214547
   3. LBJ used the CIA to wiretap Barry Goldwater’s campaign in 1964. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/22/cia-fbi-spy-presidential-campaign-trump-goldwater-218415 and https://www.heritage.org/commentary/lyndon-johnsons-watergate
6. And one can respond to all of the abuses of power that were NOT met with impeachment and say that they SHOULD have resulted in impeachment. And I’m not going to fight you over that because I think that may be right. But why are we suddenly so concerned about abuses of power?
7. I think the real reason is: because it’s Donald Trump and Donald Trump is bad. And I agree that Trump is bad in many ways. He’s an abusive bully and proud philanderer utterly bereft of dignity. I want my son not to be like him. I want my daughters to find husbands who are not like him.
8. But the President we don’t like should get treated in the same way as all of the other abusers of power UNLESS we somehow reach some sort of agreement among ourselves that we have a new standard for impeachment over abuse of power and we will mutually agree to apply this new standard to the next president. And if the new standard is “we have enough votes to impeach,” then at least say so.
   1. I don’t mean an agreement that we have changed the constitutional standard of what is impeachable, but that we change the political standard.
   2. To be impeached, the president’s conduct should meet the definition of an impeachable offense under the constitution—which we can argue about, but it doesn’t change without a constitutional amendment, AND the president’s conduct must be bad enough that there is the political will to impeach and remove him over it.
   3. The “political will” prong is inherently changeable, but it shouldn’t change willy nilly, certainly not to the point where we impeach one president for an offense when we would not impeach another president for the same offense.
   4. Want to impeach? Fine. Just impeach for the reason you’re saying you’re impeaching. In other words, be honest. Crazy, I know.
9. There is a bit of “whataboutism” in this argument. But it’s really an equal treatment argument, and I think it’s rational.
10. I just don’t think it’s actually motivating opponents of impeaching and removing Trump.

2. How utterly nauseating to hear Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff talk about how sad they are, how this is such a somber and solemn duty that they undertake with such great reluctance. Oh spare me.
3. Never nicotine-stained fingers: Here’s the statement Pelosi should have read
   1. “I told you so! From the minute we knew Donald J Trump was going to be president, we said he’s unfit for office.
   2. He’s corrupt and rotten to the core and it’s just a matter of time until he does something impeachable
   3. I knew it, you knew it, and the American people knew it.
   4. And now it’s happened. I cannot tell you my unspeakable joy that we are finally removing this cancer and stain on our nation from the oval office.
   5. And so I am proud—VERY proud—to announce that we are filing articles of impeachment against Donald J Trump.
   6. We will hold a vote shortly. And then we will see if our GOP colleagues in the Senate have the courage to stand on their own 2 feet and fearlessly vote against the bully who currently occupies the White House. Frankly I doubt they will.
   7. But the fact that they are feckless will not affect us.
   8. We will do our job.”
4. And then McConnell should’ve made the following statement:
   1. “we have received the articles of impeachment. The constitution says we must have a trial. It says nothing about what must occur in the trial. It says nothing about witnesses or how long it had hast to take. We all know that impeachment is political, so no court gets to tell us how to run this trial. So this is going to be very short trial. The over-under on witnesses is 1/2, and I’m taking the under.
   2. We think we know what we need to know, so why should we waste time we could use to confirm more judges?
   3. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle protest that we are operating in a partisan political manner.
   4. [here there is a quote from Tommie Lee Jones playing Thaddeus Stevens in the great movie Lincoln]
   5. Why are we handling it this way? Because this is political, and we have the political power deal with it. Remember when Democrats love to say elections have consequences? Well that cuts both ways.
5. If Pelosi and McConnell had made those statements, they would’ve earned no love from their opponents, but they would have at least earned the grudging respect that one gets from telling the truth.
6. But – and this is important – neither Pelosi nor McConnell ever said anything remotely close to that.
7. The Democrats kept talking about how sad they were and how somber impeachment is, and how important this constitutional duty is.
8. From the Republicans it was constant outrage at how partisan this was. A witch hunt.
   1. [here there is a quote from Tommie Lee Jones playing Thaddeus Stevens in the great movie Lincoln]
9. Maybe the weirdest thing about the whole charade to me is that we all know they’re being totally disingenuous and the main actors—Pelosi, Schiff, McConnell, etc. have to know that we all know they’re full of bull. Why is no one saying it?
   1. Where is the intrepid soul who will step up and simply say “you’re all lying!”?
   2. Am I the only one who’s not in on the joke?
   3. was there some meeting where everyone agreed to pretend these people are serious?
   4. Am I stuck in the Truman show and everyone is watching to see how long it takes for me to lose my mind?
10. If we took the people on either side of this debate seriously, we would be convinced that this—like everything else—is a Constitutional crisis. The immediate viability of our nation hinged on the outcome of this impeachment process, just as it hinges on every other controversy du jour.
11. For the Democrats, failure to remove Trump from office will automatically create a tyrannical king with unchecked power to do anything he wants without limits, which is a Constitutional crisis.
12. For the GOP, removing Trump from office creates a Constitutional crisis because it would render the president incapable of conducting foreign policy, leaving us without an effective executive branch. If the House is held by the party opposite the President, then all we will do is impeach and the nation will grind to a halt.
13. Well I’m calling bull on both sides.
14. Our nation is on a bad path politically right now.
15. The economy is doing well, and that’s great, but that can change dramatically and quickly.
16. But our civic culture is on a bad path because the loudest mouths in our system are so stinking self-righteous that the very notion that they may be wrong on any particular issue is an attack on their very humanity.
17. And if your value as a human hinges on your rightness on a political issue, then anyone who disagrees with you MUST be attacked as a vile, inhuman animal who hates American and has apocalyptic intentions and is bringing about a Constitutional crisis.
18. And that is exactly the framework in which this impeachment drama played out.
19. Both sides have to pretend that everything is a Constitutional crisis.
20. Disagree with me and you bring the apocalyptic Constitutional crisis
21. Agree with me and enjoy utopia.
22. They’re both false and I’m not playing that game.
23. The bottom line is this I will default to ambivalence so long as I view the leaders at the top of both parties as generally lacking in character, and statesmanship.
24. And this is the constitutional crisis we truly face. This – the lack of integrity and leadership-–is the apocalyptic threat to our republic. We will continue to slide downward as a republic, as a culture, and as a force for good in the world until we the people demand leaders who are trustworthy, people who we can trust at least to struggle to be motivated by our better angels.
    1. People who can humbly recognize their own corruptibility and willingly submit in word and deed to a constitutional structure that limits their power to fall prey to their own selfish ambitions.
25. You can reasonably go either way on the issue of whether Donald John Trump should’ve been removed from office. But you cannot make me think that agreeing with you will save our republic. And you cannot make me think that disagreeing with you will destroy our republic.