Editor’s note: This commentary is by Michael Long of Burlington. Long served on Burlington’s Development Review Board for more than a decade and has been active in efforts to moderate the re-development of the Burlington Town Center Mall.
[P]eter Welch’s support for impeachment is welcome. It’s time. Welcome and necessary too is his drawing attention to the elephant in the room during the Mueller hearing. And it’s a GOP elephant indeed.
Just as the GOP long ago succeeded in skewing the center far to the right, they are now led by Trump to normalize vile behavior of every kind: lies, racism, sexual assault, white supremacy, and the abandonment of bedrock American and constitutional values which, until now, would have offered zero tolerance for courting or condoning foreign interference in our elections or politics.
Now it’s quite all right in the GOP ranks not only to welcome foreign manipulation, but also to disrespect and vilify Americans like Robert Mueller and John McCain who have made exceptional contributions and upheld the highest standards of public service and personal integrity.
Many of the Republicans in the Mueller hearings treated Mueller like dirt without objection from the Democrats. This too is part of normalizing behaviors — from the unseemly to the criminal — that clearly should never be normalized.
Would Trump have to gun down a whole crowd on Fifth Avenue before notice is taken?
There is no need for a new blockbuster revelation. That was a vain and counterproductive hope spurred by timid reluctance. That Bill Barr was allowed to misrepresent and spin the Mueller report does not alter its damning content.
The Mueller report provides ample evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors and overwhelming evidence that this president is unfit, even though Mueller, in fact, let him off easy.
Trump was so eager to testify, yet refused to. He lied outright in his written responses or claimed not to remember, despite his legendary memory. Paul Manafort shared polling data and campaign strategy with a foreign government, but somehow that was not conspiratorial. Just shooting the breeze?
And obviously, however Mueller and others dance around it, and just as many Democrats and a hoard of former prosecutors have said, the evidence that the president engaged in obstruction of justice is beyond substantial.
We claim that no one is above the law, but that is a false claim without impeachment. After all, some of Trump’s partners in crime are in jail right now while his current prospect is to remain in the White House as if his presidency is normal and normative.
The Trump presidency is abnormal through and through. And the crisis for American democracy it represents is underscored by yet another GOP elephant: the distinct probability that but for Russian interference Trump would not have been elected. It’s plausible that the polls were not wrong, but that the election was hijacked instead.
Every president seeking a second term faces the voters, but few have been guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors in the interim. Congress will abdicate its responsibility if it substitutes electoral judgment for the moral and ethical judgment only Congress can exercise. When presidents commit high crimes and misdemeanors, Congress cannot stand idly by.
Trump’s tweets and his loudmouthed relish in their power and speed are the sounds of American democracy dying.
Even if the political calculation that impeachment is futile proves accurate, even if the GOP Senate mirrors Trumps’ disregard for facts and ethics — failing to impeach, normalizing a presidency of this caliber, would be joining in the demise of American democracy.
