Politics is fraught with paradox. After all, it is a prime example of a highly complex system. Today —as the Democrats give fallacious arguments in favor of impeaching President Donald J. Trump— they are quick to invoke the Constitution, the very same constitution that they want to tear down.
The US Constitution has been under attack, an obvious fact in the 2016 campaign. Democrats showed an eagerness to reform this historic document and mold it according to a new vision. Democrats yearn to control the government to give it a much larger role in everyday American life, from confiscating firearms to limiting religious freedoms. Freedom of the press has already suffered irreparable damage, but this has been taken care of by indoctrination provided by liberal universities, not law.
President Donald J. Trump is an obstacle to the change agenda of the Democrats. As such, he has been targeted for impeachment and removal from the day he was elected, not withstanding the undercover investigation of his campaign by the Obama administration. As a consequence, a large democratic arsenal of tricks has been used for this purpose. They have tried all kinds of arguments, all kinds of slanders, all kinds of accusations, from his tweets to his mental fitness. Things the democrats were guilty of doing have been twisted around and weaponized to try to remove Trump. One is the Russia intervention in the campaign, the other is the Ukrainian corrupted landscape. Whatever the excuse, the Democrats translate their accusations into the gravest conclusions imaginable: they speak of treason, of violating his oath of office, an attack of American values, of undermining national security and being a clear and present danger to the electoral process of 2020.
The impeachment about to be approved today, is aberrant. Again, it accuses the President of abuse of power when it is the House majority which is abusing its power. The Constitution can be seen as a system of gates that must be traversed if and only if certain requirements are met. However this impeachment process has been based on raw expression of majority votes, not because the requirements have been met. Steamrolling the minority without legal reason is an abuse of power. The conclusions alleged by the Democrats are grave enough, but they are not based on proven facts. The syllogistic chain of reasoning does not reach the down to earth actions of the President. The substance is not there.
As to the process, it has been a concatenation of events that clearly shows a one track mentality so blind that it does not make any sense. Democrats can anticipate that removal of the President has absolutely no viability in the Senate. In addition, the impeachment articles are not those contemplated expressly by the Constitution and are therefore very vulnerable and can be summarily dismissed as vague and unfounded. So what is the end game of the democrats. This is a smear campaign aimed at stopping the reelection of a very successful president. Democrats are not considering the cost, nor the divisiveness it has generated. Paradoxically, the Democrats are forced to say they want to impeach Mr. Trump in order to defend the Constitution when their real and final target is not President Trump, but to reform the Constitution. The dirty opposition to Judge Kavanaugh is a reminder of the real motive.
A tell tale indication of the rigged process is the fact that the Democrats did not have a clear notion of the crimes that they were seeking to hang on the President. They used the process to explore the environment. They even held focus groups as they plowed along. When one by one the crimes listed in the Constitution were examined, and their inapplicability became obvious, the Democrats pivoted to the abuse of power and obstruction of Congress articles. What was lost together with the mental confusion of the Democrats is the fact that the accused has no way of defending himself of an accusation that was never identified until the very last moment before the articles were drafted.
Democrats are betting their house to score big with the melodrama. Representatives keep talking about a sad day. It is a farce alright, aimed at inflicting pain on the American public in an effort to create an emotional election not a thinking citizen election. On this last issue, they are being badly beaten, as President Trump is doing what their hero Obama said was impossible, creating millions of jobs and the most prosperous economy in the world.
Democrats have the power to impeach without a citing a specific crime. They know that and are acting accordingly. But that is not the point. The point is that the Constitutional gates they had to pass were blown to bits, not activated with proven facts. As I said above, the conclusions they arrive at are flabbergasting because of their gravity, but they are not connected to the observed reality. The fallacy they incur in is well known. In many instances the coincidence in time of the occurrence of A is not necessarily the only cause of B. This fallacy is repeated over and over in producing the conclusions they invoke.
Let’s look at the gates. The first gate, is the framer’s idea that impeachment is meant to be a last resort measure given undeniable proof of an egregious conduct on behalf of the president. There is no shock and awe in what Mr. Trump did. It is more of a maybe yes, maybe no situation. It is a matter of the interpretation of facts, not of an indisputable affront to the legal order.
The second gate is closely linked to the first. It has to do with impeachment as the product of a bi-partisan consensus. This is a purely political appreciation, but is clearly missing in this case. The overwhelming sentiment of wrongdoing is not there, certainly not as in the case of Nixon or Clinton. This gate is referenced to how the public is reacting. Here the Democrats are thrown off balance because the Fake News media is collaborating to create the notion that impeachment is necessary and unavoidable. Polls show that 50 percent of the people think that the President should be removed. The question is how can they have answered the poll when not even the Democrats had locked-in the articles of impeachment? As noticed above, the role of the media in the Constitutional balance of the United States is not an asset, but a liability.
The third gate is Executive privilege. The separation of powers in the Constitution is counterbalanced by allowing the Executive to confront Congress in a series of matters, including questioning its subpoenas.
The fourth gate, clearly disregarded, is the absolute power of the Executive to conduct foreign policy. Independently of the gossip generated by the President’s handling of his Ukrainian foreign policy strategy within his own White House team, ambassadors, and agents, the end result of his dealings with Ukraine shows no factual damage to the United States when the moneys for military aid were delivered within the time frame allowed. The expressions of the Ukrainian president cannot be ignored. There was no “quid pro quo”, no threats, no extortion. On the contrary, all that transpired was a rather friendly exchange between both Executives.
I have argued elsewhere, and now just in passing, that President’s Trump negotiation skills are based on modern information theory, where you always consider the whole universe of possibilities first, then you increase your options and then you wait till the last moment possible to make a decision. This seems to be exactly what happened. It is not illegal but it can be confusing to those working for him. This conclusion matches his negotiation style. The Democrats are bent on impeaching his thoughts not his actions.
There is yet a fifth gate the Democrats blasted through without regard for the letter of the Constitution. This gate is the overall obligation of the President of the United States to protect the country from the actions of other countries, including Americans acting corruptly in the international environment in violation of American law. The request made to the Ukrainian executive to help the Attorney General in the investigation of the deeds of Vice-president Joe Biden, given the publicity with which he openly bragged his intromission into Ukrainian internal affairs, is an example of the fulfillment of such obligation. The fact that Joe Biden is currently in the roster of aspiring candidates to the presidency of the United States, as I said above is a concurring fact, a coincidence but cannot be taken as the sole factor behind the investigation. Interpreting reality by taking a coincidental fact and turning into a motive is not valid under the rules of logic. If there was a legal obligation to act, the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction is exactly applicable as a legal argument. There is more than one plausible explanations for the President’s request. To say there is just one, and ascribe a corrupt motive is a logically fallacy. The democrats err on the wrong side of logic and the law. Voting for impeachment based on fulfilling a personal integrity notion is not enough justification. The decision has to be the legal correct one, based on proof.
The rest of the gates that the Democrats transgressed instead of legally activating them are those resulting from due process. The explanation or theory that fits the facts about why this happened leaves the Democrats looking pretty bad. Neither the President, nor the Republicans have a minimum of opportunity to present their defense. No chance for witnesses, no input in many of the decisions that helped rush the process all the way the House floor. No chance to confront the accuser, tops them all. Even the minority’s day of hearings was denied. Rule 11 of the House proceedings became moot over and over. This transgressions fortify the theory that we are in the presence of an impeachment farce serving as a colossal smear campaign in anticipation of and in an effort to pre-empt the 2020 election.
The truth is also paradoxical: from day one of this presidency, the Democrats have systematically done what they later acuse the President of doing. The Russian scandal originated in the scheming mind of Hillary Clinton. The Mueller investigation was fostered by the FBI’s dereliction of duties and its tolerance for politically motivated investigators. Extortion, is better exemplified by Joe Biden. Corruption is better exemplified by Mr. Biden’s consenting to the sad role played by his son Hunter in the Burisma company. Abuse of power is better exemplified by Chairman Schiff and Jerrold Nadler in their official roles shunning the rights of the minority at every opportunity.
Given the outrageous disregard of the Democratic leadership for any type due process —in their haste to get the impeachment farce into the history books— it turns out that the case against President Trump is extremely vague, legally ungrounded and therefore defective. As such, it is easily subject to being summarily dismissed by Supreme Court Justice or the Senate acting as the final judge of the Senate trial. Again, paradox shows its ugly head, in the letter sent by the minority leader Senator Schumer to majority leader Mitch McConnell. In this letter the sender supplies the Republicans with two very substantive arguments. He asks for four more witnesses to appear in the Senate’s proceeding, tacitly admitting and anticipating that the yet to arrive case is going to need more factual support. The other concession is that the House acted in a precipitated manner, prioritizing speed rather than effectiveness.
This is a lucky occurrence in favor of the Republicans. Mr. Schumer has provided a clear admission of incompetence by prosecuting team of Democrat representatives, including Ms. Nancy Pelosi who masterminded the effort.
As for the historic record, the impeachment will get passed in the House and be dead on arrival in the Senate floor. Meant to be a smear on the President, it is likely to serve as a medal of honor in his presidential record. An impeachment intended to get rid of a strong presidential candidate can only be judged by its observable effect. That is the final paradox: what will not destroy Mr. Trump, will only strengthen him.
Dec. 18, 2019
San Pedro
Mr. Livas is an op-ed writer for EL NORTE newspaper in Monterrey, México. He is always interested in translating for the Mexican public the important events happening in the United States.