This commentary is by Peter Gilbert of Montpelier, a former lawyer, teacher and educational administrator.
Dear Senator McConnell:
Congratulations on your remarkable job in responding to the violent takeover of the Capitol and indeed on all your adept management of Trump matters over the last four years. Your name will surely be remembered in history along with the names of Kentuckians Ron Ziegler and Jefferson Davis as well as neighboring Tennessean Nathan Bedford Forrest and South Carolina’s John C. Calhoun.
Particularly impressive was your masterful delaying of the trial of the impeached president until after he had left office and then your assertion that a president cannot be “tried or convicted” when out of office. It is reminiscent of the brilliant two-step of Abraham Lincoln’s immediate predecessor in the White House, James Buchanan: When states began to secede from the Union before Lincoln was even inaugurated, Buchanan argued in his State of the Union Address that states did not have the right to secede, but neither the president nor the Congress had the constitutional power to stop them.
He had cleverly defined the problem as one without a solution (short of a constitutional amendment). Thus, in the face of inaction, states continued to secede, and “the war came.” That is probably the principal reason some have — until recently -— considered him the worst president in history.
Just as you have, over the last four years, consistently pointed to the real causes for our nation’s difficulties, substantive and political, Buchanan said that the impending Civil War was caused by “[t]he long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States.” Buchanan acknowledged that “secession is neither more nor less than a revolution,” but took no action, just as you asserted that there was “no question” President Trump was responsible for “provoking the events of Jan. 6, after you and the Senate had failed to convict him.
And you sagely pointed out that while there was nothing you or the Senate could do, the president “is still liable for everything he did while he was in office” and that “[h]e didn’t get away with anything, yet” because the criminal justice system and civil litigation may hold him accountable.
Long may that rule of law stand strong, and long may our country be at least as great as it has been in the last four years, thanks in no small part to your leadership in the Congress.
You must be very proud.
