We begin today’s roundup with Michelle Goldberg’s piece at The New York Times on Congress and its approach to an executive branch acting with impunity:
[H]owever you define constitutional crisis, there’s no question we’re in a moment of constitutional hardball. So far, however, only Republicans really seem to be playing. [...] Pelosi is a sharp and pragmatic woman, and her evident belief that impeachment carries strategic risks for Democrats should be taken seriously. But it is incoherent to argue that Trump constitutes an existential threat to the Constitution, and that Congress should wait to use the Constitution’s primary defense against such a threat. Democratic fear of divisiveness — even as Republicans gleefully embrace it — is leading to unilateral political disarmament.
At The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson makes an important point that this is an institutional battle, not a partisan one:
The escalating war in Washington is not between the White House and “Democrats,” despite what President Trump may claim. It is between an arrogant, out-of-control executive and the people’s duly elected representatives in Congress, whose sworn duties transcend politics. There’s a big difference.
Trump tries to drag everyone and everything down to the basest, most transactional level, which is the only level he knows. In his telling, it’s “Democrats” who are demanding to see his tax returns, “Democrats” who want public testimony by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and former White House counsel Donald McGahn, “Democrats” who are holding hearings and issuing subpoenas for the sole purpose of persecuting Donald J. Trump. [...]
The fact that the House of Representatives is currently controlled by the Democratic Party instead of the Republican Party does not alter its responsibilities — or mitigate its powers.
At The Nation, John Nichols interviews constitutional expert Rep. Jamie Raskin:
john nichols: How should we be thinking about impeachment?
jamie raskin: It’s the people’s and the Congress’s final instrument of self-defense against a president who is trampling the rule of law and assuming the powers of a king. It has both legal and political dimensions. The legal aspect requires us to ask whether there have been high crimes and misdemeanors such as treason or bribery, which I take to mean grave offenses from on high of a public character against the democracy itself. The political part requires us to ask whether the public interest demands impeachment and conviction as a remedy to stop a pattern of misconduct that is contemptuous of the rule of law and our Constitution. If it were a purely legal judgment, it would have been assigned to the courts in Article III, but the founders rejected that idea and located it in Article I, with Congress.
Here’s Ryan Cooper’s take at The Week:
Trump's base of perhaps 40 percent or so will likely never abandon him. But impeachment proceedings can still serve as a powerful political weapon. If Democrats can focus attention on the top two or three stories that are simplest and most scandalous, and repeat them over and over during the proceedings, that helps create a narrative that can stick in the minds of voters. This will both excite the Democratic base and demoralize Republicans, who will struggle to overcome the cognitive dissonance of President "Drain the Swamp" having both hands deep in the federal till. (Meanwhile, presidential candidates can continue to focus mainly on attractive policy to win votes.)
It will also show the country that Democrats are willing to stand up to defend American democracy even if the entire Republican Party will let Trump get away with anything. It shows spirit, determination, and confidence — things that attract voters in times of uncertainty.
Here’s Susan B. Glasser’s take:
In area after area during the past few years, Trump has taken advantage of decades of congressional inaction or has flouted norms that were long assumed but not explicitly enshrined in law. That’s what happens when a President is willing to defy convention in the way that Trump is. There’s no law requiring him to hold a regular White House press briefing, any more than there is a law explicitly saying that “because I don’t want to” is not a proper reason for refusing a legitimate congressional inquiry. In the past, the presumed blowback acted as a constraint on Presidents. (Though, of course, many of them, long before Trump, sought to expand their executive authority.) What’s different now is that Trump acts as though he is immune from the political pressure to operate within the accepted system that his predecessors felt. “To me, that is what has broken down over the last thirty months, that those constraints have proved utterly ineffective,” Vladeck said. “All of these are of a piece, where we have a President and an Administration that is absolutely shameless when it comes to bleeding every legal authority it has for every ounce of support it can drain.”
On a final note, Paul Rosenzweig, senior counsel on the Starr investigation, writes at USA Today that but for the fact he is president, Donald Trump would have been charged with a crime:
James Wilson, one of the Founders and a member of the first Supreme Court, wrote that “far from being above the laws, (the President) is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen.” The Framers of our Constitution rightly thought that presidents could and should be criminally prosecuted like any other citizen.
I wish special counsel Mueller had said that more clearly. But because he didn’t, I and others must say it for him. It simply cannot be the case that the president, and only the president, can use his otherwise lawful powers in a corrupt way and not be called to account. At least I hope that isn’t the law.