What’s an Impeachable Offense? We Don’t Know and that is the Problem

 After the 57-43 Senate acquittal of Donald Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting insurrection

against the government we are constitutionally left with a question:   What is an impeachable offense so serious that it merits the conviction and possible removal of a president from office?  As a result of this last failed impeachment this tool of controlling and disciplining abuses of presidential power is effectively dead.

US constitutional framers inherited the impeachment process from England.  In the battles for supremacy between parliament and the monarchy, the former used impeachment as a check upon the crown’s ministers, using the tool to remove those who abused their powers.    Impeachment was not a tool to be used against the monarch–the only or ultimate tool was the Glorious Revolution of 1688 resulting in a vastly weakened monarchy which was compelled into signing the English Bill of Rights in 1689.

The US constitutional framers too were fearful of strong executive power. US independence from England was precipitated by perceived abuses of power by King George III. The 1776 Declaration of Independence, especially the second half, is a catalog of a bill of particulars against the King.  Reaction to strong monarchical power produced America’s first constitution with no independent president.  By 1787 this was seen as a problem, and the task of the framers was to constitutionally produce a president with neither too weak or too sufficient of powers.

While Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Papers numbers 70-74 celebrated a strong presidency, other constitutional framers such as Benjamin Franklin and James Madison worried about abuses of presidential power.  Franklin declared that because it would be difficult to get a criminal conviction let alone an indictment of a sitting president, another tool was needed to check him.  Madison and others worried that limiting checks on the president to criminal violations might miss broader abuses of power including mal-administration.  They thus settled on the British impeachment model as a tool or remedy.  They adopted the phrase “treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors” as grounds for impeachment.

Originally the impeachment process called for the House to impeach and the Supreme Court to try the charges.  But later on during the constitutional convention the trial was moved to the Senate.  But at no point did the Framers clarify critical questions such as what is a high crime and misdemeanor; what standard of proof is needed to indict or convict; could one impeach or convict after a president left office; and if and when could the Senate vote to bar the president from holding future office?  Neither the text of the Constitution nor the constitutional debates clarify these questions, and English historical precedent is equally murky. Additionally, keep in mind that at the time of convention, political parties were assumed to be bad and hoped not to exist, and the Senators were appointed by state legislators and presumed to be above politics.  As a result, House indictments and Senate trials and the concepts of checks and balances and separation of powers  would place the country before the party.

Over time so much has changed.  Parties flourished and dominated American politics, especially today, in ways the Framers feared.  Senators are elected and captured by partisan politics.  These two factors alone changed the impeachment process. American history shows that.  Moreover, presidential power has vastly expanded, raising fears of what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.  once called the imperial presidency.

Five serious impeachment processes have been initiated against US presidents (Andrew Johnson 1867; Richard Nixon 1973; Bill Clinton 1998; Donald Trump 2019; Donald Trump 2021).  All five started as investigations by rival parties, although Nixon’s enjoyed bipartisan support in the House Judiciary Committee vote to recommend to the entire House impeachment.  Had Nixon not resigned, who knows the final result.

But in the four remaining impeachments, House indictments and Senate trial votes largely followed party lines.  The fact that Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial resulted in the most  bipartisan vote ever with seven of 50 Republicans voting to convict still is not much of a story to tell.  Moreover, there have been four trials and four acquittals.  It’s just not clear now what is a convictable offense.  

The impeachment process has been trivialized and rendered powerless.  Indictment for lying about a sexual affair (Clinton) was a mistake, bringing two impeachments against Trump when there was no chance of a guilty verdict did equally as much damage to the process.  If seeking to pressure a foreign official to investigate a US president’s political rival or inciting an attack on the US Capitol were not convictable offenses then what is?  Short term partisan politics, anger, or the false belief that a point had to be made have done longer term damage to checks on presidential power.  Talk to any smart prosecutor.  Do not bring charges against someone unless you have a reasonable belief that you are going to get a conviction.

Trump twice abused his presidential power and deserved punishment but impeachment was the wrong strategy. Trump lost the election, he faces possible post-presidency indictments, and public opinion declares what he did leading up to and including January 6, 2021 was wrong.  History would have rendered the judgement and precedent here.  This acquittal renders history less clear.  It sets the president for whether impeachment will ever be a tool to check presidents.  It leaves open the very problem Democrats wanted to address–how to check abuses of power of presidents leaving office.  This checking of presidential power was the problem US constitutional framers sought to address in 1787, and it is even less clear now what the solution is.

The Myth of Partisan Backlash: The Real Lessons of Past Impeachments

Nancy Pelosi=s decision for so long not to pursue impeachment against Donald Trump   The basis of this wisdom is the 1998 Republican impeachment of Bill Clinton.  The real lesson of 1998 and other prior impeachments  may far different than what the national media and Washington insiders may believe, and, in fact, past impeachments may provide little clue to what might happen this time.was based on national media Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom that it will backlash against Democrats, ensuring his reelection in 2020, if not the loss of the House.

Each impeachment and trial is politically unique, taking place under specific factual circumstances.  Consider the three impeachments of presidents that have thus far occurred.

The first was Andrew Johnson in 1868.  He was a Tennessee Democrat, Abraham Lincoln=s 1864 vice-president who  became president upon the latter=s assassination.  Lincoln chose him as appeasement to the border states to hold them within the Union.  Yet Johnson opposed the abolition of slavery, impeded  Reconstruction, and did his best to stymie it via vetoes, non-administration, and the firing of holdover Lincoln  appointees.  While the 11 Articles of Impeachment that the House voted on were mostly about the firing of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton contrary to congressional law, the real issue was a congressional-presidential fight over Reconstruction.

The impeachment came at a time when many southern states from Confederacy were effectively under federal control, with 10 of them not readmitted for representation in Congress.  The House of Representatives voted 126 to 47 (with 17 members not voting), to impeach.  Given how few Democrats in the House, this was mostly a Republican effort.   The Senate acquitted Johnson by one vote.  It was a body heavily dominated by Republicans.

There was no partisan backlash among voters that appeared in the 1968 election.  The Republican Ulysses S. Grant won the presidency, Republicans lost two seats in the House, the Democrats picked up 20, mostly from reseating of the South.  In the Senate, Democrats gained no seats while the Republicans picked up 20.

In July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee voted on three Articles of Impeachment against Nixon, for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.  These articles arose from Nixon=s  ordering of the Watergate break-in and seeking to hide the crime and hinder congressional  investigations.  The Committee  recommended the three articles  to the full House, mostly along party lines. Before a full impeachment vote, Nixon resigned.  However come November Democrats retained a large majority in the House even as they lost 13 seats, while in the Senate they increased  their control by five seats.

Finally, in 1998 House Republicans led by Speaker Newt Gingrich impeached Bill Clinton  on Articles of Impeachment arising out of his perjury before a grand jury and obstruction of justice.  The charges were the result of investigations undertaken by special prosecutor Kenneth Starr and whether Clinton had lied under oath about a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.  Impeachment proceedings began before the 1998 election although the actual vote to impeach occurred in December.  The vote followed mostly party lines.  The Senate trial began in January 1999, concluding in February with an acquittal again mostly along party lines.

What is significant about the Clinton impeachment is that Newt Gingrich reportedly said that Republicans would pick up 30 seats by doing it.  They lost five and eventually Gingrich had to resign, some claim, because of this.   In the Senate, Republicans lost no seats. Clinton went on to serve out his term and left office in 2001 with one of the highest presidential approval ratings in years.

The conventional wisdom from 1998 was that the Republican impeachment was viewed as purely partisan, mobilizing Democratic voters to Clinton=s and their party=s defense.  This is the lesson or specter that supposedly haunts Democrats nowBimpeach Trump and fail and he survives stronger, wins re-election, and Democrats pay in the 2020 elections.

Yet this morale is too simplistic.  As much as 1998 was so different from 1868 and 1974, so it 2019 or 2020.  Yes, all three previous impeachments have been brought by the opposition party and many of the votes fell along partisan lines.  Perhaps this means that opposition parties are doing what they are supposed to doBhelp check the other party.  All three took place in highly partisan times, and all three centered on congressional-presidential struggles for power.  But there the parallels end, especially with 1998 and the present.

Trump is less popular now than Clinton was at impeachment time.  Lying about a sexual relationship (at least then) was seen as less serious than potential Articles of Impeachment against Trump involving abuse of power connected to his conversation with the Ukrainian president.  America now is a different kind of partisan country than 1998.  It could also be the case this impeachment mobilizes Democrats, especially after a probable Republican acquittal in the Senate.  Also, other variables, such as a slowing economy, concern over foreign affairs, and a host of other issues might mean that 2020 is far different than 1998.

 But also, given that the 1998 impeachment occurred after the elections that year, it might be better to look at what happened in the 2000 elections where Republicans lost two seats in the House, five in the Senate, but won the presidency in a contested George Bush/Al Gore election that came down to Florida.  In reality from 1998 to 2000 Republicans only lost seven House and five Senate seats and took by the presidency.    Yes sets were lost, but it is hard to attribute solely to Clinton=s impeachment.  The real issue may have been Gingrich=s over-promise and creating unreasonable expectations.

The point is that there is no one clear message about partisan backlash that can be told from the three prior impeachments.  This too includes 1998.  The conventional wisdom that a potential coming impeachment of Trump will necessarily benefit him and Republicans and hurt Democrats is either groundless or speculative at best, with at least a potential scenario it helps Democrats in 2020.

The Nixon-Trump Southern Strategy Goes North: The Midwest, Race, and the 2020 Presidential Election

Donald Trump’s recent tweet telling Congresswomen  Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar  (all female and people of color) to leave the country is the most recent example of his effort to take Richard Nixon’s old southern strategy and apply it to the Midwest.  Trump is betting that it will work as effectively in 2020 as did it work for Nixon in 1968.  Whether it does, tells us a lot about where the US is today in terms of race relations.

Consider some American history.  From the US Civil War until the 1960s political scientists such as V.O. Key refer to the “Solid South.”   Republican Party opposed slavery and Democrats resisted civil rights.  The result was that the US South voted consistently for Democrats at all levels of office, but especially for president.  The south was a mainstay for the Democratic Party.

But beginning in the 1960s the Solid South cracked, and it did so over civil rights.  First it was the 1954 Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision that demanded integrated schools.  Then it was President Lyndon Johnson’s signing of the 1964 Civil Rights bill (and where he reputedly declared that with the signing of the bill the Democrats had lost the south for the rest of the century).  These two events launched a chain reaction of events. In 1963  George Wallace inaugurated his Alabama governorship by declaring “"segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever," and he mounted his 1968 presidential campaign on opposition to civil rights.

While never as overtly racist as Wallace, Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign centered on race.  Nixon ran as a law and order, war on drugs, get tough on crime president.  Given the unrest in urban cores in the US and the civil rights demonstrations, these phrases of Nixon were code words for race.  The strategy worked–Nixon won, and he did so by winning several southern states no Republican had secured in 100 years.

The Republican Southern strategy of appealing to race and white conservatism was well described by Kevin Phillips, the architect of Nixon’s 1968 campaign and author of the 1969 The Emerging Republican Majority.  It described a majority of white working class American who in reaction to civil rights and cultural progressivism, would break away from the Democrats and vote Republican.
Largely the strategy worked.  Subsequent Republicans appealed to race and also to economic insecurities and anxieties to move working class Democrats over.  At first they were called “Reagan  Democrats, then perhaps Tea Parties, then perhaps now Trump Democrats.  Race was covert in moving them.  But sometimes, such as in the presidential race between George  H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, race was overt.  In that campaign the “Willie Horton” ads depicted a Black felon who had raped and murdered a woman.  Polls and evidence suggested these ads were decisive in helping Bush win by peeling off white voters from the Democrats.  All this was part of the Republican Southern Strategy.

And it worked.  By the mid 1990s Democrats had all but disappeared from the South at all levels of office.  The solid south was now a Republican south.

Enter Donald Trump.  His 2016 presidential campaign was famous for at least two points.  One, it appealed to the economic and racial anxiety of white working class America.  Two, it was a Midwest strategy.  Attacks on Mexicans and immigrants as rapists, drug smugglers, and criminals who take American jobs and collect welfare were a mainstay of his 2016 campaign. No surprise that such rhetoric appealed to many southern whites, but what surprised many was its success in appealing to working class whites in the Midwest.    These were individuals who had seen their coal mine, auto, or steel plants disappear.  Trump offered an answer–it was immigration, immigrants, and off-shoring of jobs that was to blame.  Bringing back coal was less about really bringing back coal than it was code word for race.  And it worked.  Trump split the Midwest–one described as a firewall for Democrats, by winning all the states there except for Illinois and Minnesota.

What Trump did in 2016 was to take Nixon’s Southern Strategy that split the Solid South  in 1968 and use it in the Midwest to break the Democrats’ firewall.  Only now for 2020, the rhetoric  is more explicit–it looks more like George Wallace than Richard Nixon.  Attacking Representatives  Congresswomen  Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Pressley, and Omar was explicitly and outwardly racist.  The House of Representatives will condemn it, the media will attack it, many Republicans will renounce it.  But it may work as an effective 2020 strategy, further motivating Trump’s base to show up and vote.

Longer term the Trump’s Southern Strategy in the Midwest will fail.  Demographic trends  point to working class whites as a decreasing percentage of the electorate each year.  But right now this group is still the largest voting bloc in America.  For Trump to win in 2020 he needs the Midwest, but he needs his base to come out to vote in even greater percentages than in 2016.  Were he to win in 2020 it suggests that America is not yet “post-racial.” that large chucks of the American electorate still resonates to racial cues, and that Nixon’s 1968 Southern Strategy is not dead but has shifted to the Midwest.

Presidents are not Kings: Why Trump’s Pardon of Joe Arpaio was Wrong

President Trump was perfectly within his constitutional authority to pardon ex-sheriff Joe

Arpaio, and there is little anyone can do about it.  And that is the problem.  The concept of unlimited discretion of the president to issue pardons and reprieves is clearly inconsistent with the concept of limited government and checks and balances and the courts need to rethink the constitutional doctrine that allows for such unchecked authority.

The historical roots of presidential pardoning power are sourced in British monarchical power.  At one time British kings and queens had unlimited political power, subject to no checks and balances.  “Rex non potest peccare”–“The king could do no wrong”–was the legal theory that gave monarchs not just unimpeachable political power to command, but also the capacity to forgive and pardon.  To paraphrase The Merchant of Venice, the quality of mercy could be strained, as determined by the king.

Yet the idea of unchecked monarchical power in England ended if not with the Magna Charta in 1215, it did so with the adoption of the English Bill of Rights in 1689 and the Glorious Revolution in 1688-89.  Kingly power was subject to limits and, as British philosopher John Locke would argue in his Two Treatises on Government, legitimate governments and authority are subject to limits defined by the rights and consent of the people.  No government official, including a king, should be given unlimited and unchecked authority.

Locke is considered America’s philosopher; he heavily influenced the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson.  In writing the Declaration of Independence, the famous second paragraph that begins with “We hold these truths to be self-evident” is homage to Locke.  So to is the opening words of the Constitution–“We the people”–and even the Bill of Rights.  All of these documents speak to the idea of a government of limited powers and authority, that no one person is above the law, and that the very idea of American constitutionalism is one where there are no inherent and unlimited powers vested in anyone person, office, or body.  The constitutional framers fear of kings and unbridled abuse of power and discretion is the reason for separation of powers and checks and balances.

However some kingly like powers seemed to work their way into the Constitution. Article II, Section  2 grants that “The President . . . shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”  During the Constitutional Convention and debates surrounding its ratification critics feared that the power would be abused and that it needed to be checked, including perhaps by the Senate.  These calls were rejected, and as Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist number 74: The “prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed.” But it is not clear that all the Framers intended the pardoning power to be unchecked at all.  The debates at the Constitutional convention demonstrated many concerned with granting presidents unlimited power, others seeming to assume that presidents would excise appropriate discretion in its use.  Unfortunately the courts have not agreed to such checks.

In Ex parte Garland (71 U.S. 333, 1867) the Supreme Court said of the pardoning power that the

"power thus conferred is unlimited, with the exception stated. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. This power of the President is not subject to legislative control. Congress can neither limit the effect of his pardon, nor exclude from its exercise any class of offenders. The benign prerogative of mercy reposed in him cannot be fettered by any legislative restrictions."

The pardoning power scope is so broad that it even allowed President Gerald Ford to pardon Richard Nixon before he had been indicted for any crimes.

President Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon was controversial, and some say it was the reason why Gerald Ford eventually lost a very close presidential race to Jimmy Carter in 1976. Since this pardon, other presidents have used their powers to pardon for political reasons. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan pardoned two FBI agents convicted for authorizing illegal searches of property of antiwar protestors in 1973. In 1992 President George Bush pardoned former defense secretary Caspar Weinberger and other individuals associated with the Iran-Contra Affair during the Reagan administration, and in 2001 President Bill Clinton pardoned Patty Hearst, a kidnaped heiress turned member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, and Marc Rich, who had been indicted on charges of making illegal oil deals and tax evasion. The latter pardon was considered controversial because Rich’s wife was a significant political donor to Clinton campaigns. George W. Bush issued very few pardons and Barack Obama issued 212 complete pardons and another 1,715 commutations of sentences.  While all these pardons met constitutional muster, no  doubt some could be considered abuses of presidential power.

Presidents do have a constitutional power to pardon and mercy is something they should be allowed to show, using the pardon as a way to correct injustices.  Yet pardons should not be beyond  constitutional limits and review.  Presidents who abuse their pardoning power might not get reelected–as in the case of Gerald Ford–or be subject to impeachment as Harvard law professor Noah Feldman contends.  But these checks are insufficient, and if the dicta in Garland is taken seriously then nothing would prevent presidents from pardoning themselves, relatives, political allies, and friends.  A constitutional morality that takes rights seriously and also believes that no one should   profit from their own wrong or stand beyond accountability should not allow for unchecked presidential pardoning power.  Presidents are not kings, they do and should not have inherent and unlimited authority to do anything, including pardon.

The Supreme Court got it wrong in Garland and it is time for the Supreme Court to overturn that precedent.  That decision and dicta are a relic from a different era and legal system.  If the American Revolution and Constitution stand for anything it is that no one is above the law.  Granting presidents unchecked pardoning power, especial in how Trump used it with Arpaio, is inconsistent with separation of powers and checks and balances in that it undermines the ability of the judiciary to act and hold people responsible for contempt.  Unlike kings at one time, we do not presume that presidents can do no wrong and instead the logic of the Constitution is premised on the notion that–as James Madison said in Federalist number 51, that “Men are not angels"–and that there should be limits on all uses of power. Over time the Supreme Court has issued numerous decisions limiting presidential powers, and the same needs to occur with the pardoning power.

Trumpapalooza: It’s Worse than Watergate

With each passing day and news story about the Trump administration, the parallels to Nixon and
Watergate get stronger and stronger.  Yet while stories of coverups, obstruction of justice, and the hiring of a special investigator invite powerful comparisons, the reality is that with Trump it is  potentially far worse than Watergate, far worse than Clinton, Lewinsky, and Whitewater, and maybe even worse than Iran Contra.  Trumpapalooza–an all encompassing, 24/7, multi-media extravaganza, –could be the worst of all presidential scandals so far.
It is unfortunate that one of the defining themes of American politics in the last 50 years has been repeated stories of abuses of presidential power.  Once called the imperial presidency by historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., it was a product of granting too much power to the president to act in a range of domestic and international events, congressional acquiescence of its constitutional duties, and usurpation and abuse of authority of presidents for personal gain or revenge.
Watergate is the paradigm of that abuse.  Most narrowly defined, Watergate when the story first broke was about a break in at the Democratic Party national headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C.  The story started at first without any allegations of presidential role of White House connection, but it soon expanded to be a much more comprehensive saga of the abuses of power of the Nixon presidency.
The Watergate break in occurs in June, 1972, in the middle of Nixon’s re-election bid for a second term.  Initially there is no indication of presidential involvement but there were rumors shortly after the break in Nixon was already hard at work ordering hush money to cover his tracks.  In addition, in the burglars’ possession when caught was Nixon’s campaign headquarters reelection number The Watergate story does not really take off until 1973 when several reporters and mounting political pressure forced Congress to begin hearings, and then in October 1973 after Nixon had named former Solicitor General Archibald Cox as a special investigator to look into the events, the former fired the later in the famous Saturday Night Massacre.
Through the remainder of 1973 and into 1974 the House and Senate Watergate hearings and the investigation of Leon Jaworski produced a tale of illegal activity that implicated the president of the United States along with his attorney general and other major officials in his administration.  Tied directly to Watergate were Nixon’s ordering of the break in, the cover up, efforts to impede the criminal investigation, and in the end a constitutional battle over the possession of White House tapes of conversations that Nixon had made.  All of this culminated in the Supreme Court decision United States v. Nixon where the Court ordered Nixon to turn over his tapes to a special prosecutor, ruling that the imperatives of a criminal investigation outweigh any executive privilege g rounded in the Constitution  that the president may have in withholding them.  In effect, the president was not above the law.  That decision, along with a House Judiciary vote along bipartisan lines to impeach the president and a grand jury naming the president as an”unindicted co-conspirator,” forced Nixon to resign on August 8, 1974.
Watergate started with a pretty break in of the opposition’s headquarters.  But the entire story of Nixon’s abuse of power also encompassed illegal fundraising, payments of hush money, maintaining an enemies list, attacks on the media, and engaging in an illegal war in Cambodia.  Watergate engulfed, dominated, and ended early Nixon’s second term as president, after serving an initial four years that did produce a score of major legitimate legislative victories including the passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.  For all the criticism of Nixon, he was a career politician with a congressional and vice-presidential resume, and he had an ability to work with Congress.
It’s potentially far worse than Trump for him, his presidency, the Republican party, and maybe the United States. Trump has no experience in government or the military, and therefore no real understanding or apparent interest in how Washington works.  In many cases he has also appointed individuals with no government experience, and he has failed to fill many critical positions in government.  Trump ran on draining the swamp in Washington and he seems to think that this means crippling the machinery of governance, yet to secure his policy agenda he needs to take control of what Steve Bannon labels the deep administrative state.  So long as Trump continues to show contempt for the Constitution and government he will be unable to get anything done.  The first 120 days portend a pattern of policy inaction, preventing him and the Republicans from securing  their policy agenda.  Trump has created something unique for Washington–intra-party gridlock.  One expected Obama and the Republican Congress to be at odds–but not this kind of stalemate.
But if an aborted or arrested policy agenda were the total of what the problems facing Trump that might not be so bad. Yet it is coming at the beginning of his presidency, not in a second term as was the case with Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton.   But more importantly, the bigger problem are the legal, constitutional, and political issues.  Nixon and Watergate began with allegations of presidential involvement in a petty burglary, the story here involves Trump, his campaign, and his administration’s complicity and conspiracy to work with Russia to interfere and influence American elections and policy.  
Allegations that Trump personally, his family and business dealings, and many of his advisors or staff that include Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, and Paul Manafort worked with the Russians, were being paid by them, or in some way coordinated with or cheered on their activities to affect US elections and policy is  far worse than Watergate.  It is far worse than the arms for hostages diversion that Reagan ordered in Irancontra, and it is clearly far worse than Clinton lying about his sexual behavior or losing money in a land deal called Whitewater.
And we can draw this comparison with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, having all or most of the facts about these previous abuses of power in hand.  Right now few of the facts of  Trumpapalooza are known and investigations have hardly started.  It potentially will reveal far worse.  Who knows how far-flung the story will be, and where it takes one into ow Trump’s private business dealings connect to Russia and other foreign governments or what conflicts of interests it will produce.  Who knows the real reasons for the Comey firings and whether they amounted to obstruction of justice.  Who knows whether the war on the media has produced an enemies list or what other unconstitutional activities (beyond two botched executive orders on immigration and one on sanctuary cites) there are or have been.
The appointment of Robert Mueller as special investigator is only the beginning.  For any who think this is going to be a quick investigation, think again.  The more Trump fights it and sees it as a witch hunt the more likely it seems that he will be uncooperative and force the investigation  well into 2018, thereby nearly guaranteeing that it impedes the Trump-Republican policy agenda, and impacts the elections.
The electoral connection is the last and perhaps most interesting parallel to Watergate.  Until in 1973 when efforts to investigate Nixon were bipartisan, so far the GOP has stood by Trump, tying their political fortunes to him.  They are resisting calls to investigate and criticize.  But if Trump becomes even more of a political liability to them, they may be forced to act otherwise in 2018 there could be a repeat of 1974 when Democrats won huge majorities in Congress, Minnesota, and across the nation.  It is the fear or possibility of that political reality that dictates how the Republicans respond to Trump in the next few months.

The Lessons of Vietnam: Why Obama’s, McCain’s, and All the Other ISIS Plans will Fail

Listening to Obama’s speech Wednesday outlining his ISIS strategy was deja vu’ all over again.    It regurgitated the same failed strategy to deal with terrorism that Bush first gesticulated; but more importantly it uncomfortably demonstrated yet again the failed lessons of Vietnam that American leaders have yet to learn in the 40 years since that war ended.  His speech, along with the other plans proposed by the neo-cons and warmongers such as John McCain and Graham Lindsay, aptly confirmed one of the greatest lines by Karl Marx who stated once in his The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”
    In a nutshell, Obama’s strategy is simple and simpleminded–America will drop tons of bombs on ISIS, expand the war to Syria, and rely upon ground troops provided by Iraq and other countries to replace Americans on the ground. It is a military strategy devoid of a political solution, emphasizing that it may take years (and into the next presidency) to succeed.  Obama inherited a failed war and is now passing it onto the next president.
    How much this reminds me of Vietnam, except not Obama is both Johnson and Nixon at the same time. President Johnson inherited a nascent war from Kennedy only to escalate it and then in  the waning year of his presidency to express remorse about its efficacy after the Tet Offense in 1968 where any confidence of US victory was destroyed by a massive North Vietnamese offense in January of that year.  The war cost Johnson a second term as president.  Nixon took over, again escalated it, including expanding the war illegally and secretly with bombings into Cambodia.  When  that did not work, Nixon’s peace plan was the “Vietnamization” of the war–replacing American ground troops with those of the South Vietnamese–hoping that the latter would be able to continue the war and delay America’s indignant and inevitable loss for a few years. 
    Obama’s expansion of the bombings and reliance upon Iraq or other ground troops is just Cambodia and Vietnamization warmed over.  But so was Bush’s response to 9-11, or to the invasion of Iraq in pursuit of the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.  In all these cases the assumption was that American military might will overwhelm the enemy, liberating the people to form their own democratic societies.  It worked really well in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
    Alone the factual parallels to Vietnam should be instructive to why the Obama, McCain, et al plans will fail.  But dig deeper, there are two major lessons or reasons why any of the plans currently proposed are farces.  First, consider Powell Doctrine.  General Colin Powell in 1990 stated that the use of US military force needs to answer several questions, including asking whether there is a vital US interest at stake?  Are there clear objectives for the use of force?  Is there a clear definition of success?  And is there an exit strategy?  On all accounts, what Obama described in his Wednesday speech missed the mark.  About the only real rationale for going back to war is that we failed before  and that now we need to do more of the same to postpone failure even longer.  It is not clear what the US interest is, and even if there is one, we have no benchmarks for success or a strategy for leaving.  Quagmire was the word once used to describe Vietnam–that is the new word now for Iraq.
    But even more profoundly, the failure of Obama’s strategy lies in perhaps the most important lesson of Vietnam–the limits of US military power.  The single greatest book on Vietnam remains  Frances FitzGerald’s Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam.  In describing the failed war she describes of the US escalation into Vietnam:

    It was entering into a moral and ideological struggle over the form of the state and the goals of the society.  Its success with the chosen contender would depend not merely on US power but on the resources of both the United States and the Saigon government to solve Vietnamese domestic problems in a manner acceptable to the Vietnamese.  But what indeed were Vietnamese problems, and did they even exist in terms in which Americans conceived them?  The unknowns made the whole enterprise, from the most rational and tough-minded point of view, risky in the extreme.   (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), 6-7.

The tragic failure of Vietnam was that it was really a battle for the hearts and minds of the people–not a war that could be one on the battlefield with bombs.  The US did understand that the problem of Vietnam was not a geopolitical one between communism and democracy, but a more indigenous cultural battle among the people there.  The same is true in Iraq and Syria.  This is not a global battle over terrorism and freedom but a problem that has to be solved by the people in that part of the world.  Dropping bombs does little to resolve the fight, especially if as in Vietnam it hurts  civilians and pushes them to the other side or continues to prevent people from solving their own problem.
    Missing from Obama’s and all the other plans is an asking of the question to why ISIS is so successful in recruiting supporters.  There is no plan to ascertaining why, for example, individuals from the Minnesota Somalian community are joining terrorist groups or why British citizens are becoming ISIS members who are beheading Americans.  Until such time as the focus shifts to asking these questions, to realizing that a strategy in place since Vietnam will not work, the current plans too will fail in farcical ways.