There was intense partisan wrangling in the house during its brief intelligence committee hearings, the judiciary committee’s rapid-fire action, and the single day of floor debate on its impeachment measure. Congress is already at Defcon 2, and that could escalate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi now insists she won’t send the impeachment articles to the Senate until its majority leader, Mitch McConnell, agrees to her conditions for Trump’s trial. She’s threatening to raise the acrimony to a new level.
This is no normal back-and-forth about versions of a bill congress is considering. Pelosi is venturing into treacherous constitutional territory. Article one gives the house “the sole power of impeachment” and the Senate “the sole power to try all impeachments.” By attempting to prevent the process from proceeding unless McConnell acquiesces to her demands for additional witnesses and documents, Pelosi is attempting to intrude on the Senate’s constitutional prerogatives and create a role for herself in the trial that the Founders didn’t intend.
Pelosi presumes to be the arbiter of whether the Senate has a “fair process.” She told reporters: “So far, we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us.” This is more than an invitation to McConnell to hear her out — it’s a demand that he clear his plans with her before proceeding. She imagines herself as Ulysses S. Grant at Fort Donelson in February 1862, and while McConnell is a Kentuckian like Simon Bolivar Buckner, his position is stronger than that of the surrounded Confederate general — strong enough to beat back Pelosi’s demand of unconditional surrender.
McConnell, the wiliest majority leader since Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1950s, won’t capitulate.
He occupies the high ground of precedent, saying the Senate should proceed as it did with Bill Clinton. The Senate adopted rules for his trial by a 100-0 vote with the support of freshman Democrat senator Chuck Schumer, now minority leader.
McConnell is aided by the perception that Pelosi has made Schumer look like her puppet. That’s never a good thing for any senator, even if the representative in question is the Speaker.
Pelosi’s approach is also creating more political difficulties for Democrats. The house acted hastily compared with previous impeachments, as its leaders claimed the President’s removal was urgently needed. Pelosi herself opened the house debate on the impeachment resolution last week by calling Trump “an ongoing threat to our national security”.
Suddenly, however, Pelosi wants to hurry up and wait. She’s content to let this national security “threat” linger in the Oval Office until she gets her way. And while impeachment has spun up activists in both parties, ordinary Americans, especially swing voters who will decide the 2020 contest, appear to be losing interest. It’s not only because of the holidays. Washington is always infected with some amount of tomfoolery, but Pelosi and the Democratic impeachment tactics have heavily taxed the tolerance of everyday Americans.
The Speaker’s spin squad has worked overtime to sell her as an adroit leader. She’s made some wise moves, like replacing the hapless Jerry Nadler with the ambitious Adam Schiff as the chief Democratic inquisitor. She’s also mostly struck the right tone, saying, “This is a very sad time for our country . . . we must be sombre, we must be prayerful”.
However, Pelosi’s hand has been often forced by the Democratic Party’s left-wing base, driven so much by such hatred for the President that it doesn’t care whether the impeachment process is debased in the pursuit of removing him from office.
Zealotry comes at a cost. Impeachment has already overpowered the messages of the Democratic presidential campaigns as the Iowa caucuses approach. Some Democrats are now pushing the ludicrous idea that Pelosi should hand McConnell the impeachment resolution as the President arrives at the Capitol February 4 to deliver his State of the Union address.
Americans deserve a dignified conclusion to impeachment, as the Senate gave them with Clinton in 1999. Impeachment always inflicts trauma on the nation. We can accept that. What the country shouldn’t accept is a continuation of this Democrat-led circus.
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There are always tensions between the US House of Representatives and the Senate, even when the same party controls both chambers. Each views the other, and its rules, procedures and attitudes, with some disdain. But the normal friction between the bodies has increased since the house began its effort to impeach President Donald Trump.