Second impeachment may be least of Trump’s problems post-presidency

US President Donald Trump exits the Oval Office. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The odium attached to being impeached twice is now something Donald Trump will carry for life. Of course that may well be the least of his problems in life after the presidency.

While the President can pardon himself (with dubious yet-to-be-tested constitutional authority) from federal laws, state laws are something he can’t get around so easily. Unless Trump hides out in favourable red states and avoids being extradited to those states with warrants out for his arrest state laws just might catch up with him.

Or he can flee the country in total ignominy.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Trump hasn’t been charged with anything just yet and the Senate is highly unlikely to convict off the back of this second impeachment. Nonetheless, the fact a gaggle of Republicans crossed the floor to back the impeachment is significant. Liz Cheney no small figure among them.

It speaks to the concerns within sections of the party about what Trump has done to it. About the lack of leadership shown in standing up to him before now. About how far the President has gone (too far) and just how dangerous he has become.

And let’s not forget we all knew these aspects to his character before now. Long before now. Apart from anything else, the aspects to his character that lent themselves to the way Trump has acted since his trouncing at the election fit almost perfectly with the clinical diagnosis of the man by his niece and PhD in psychology, Mary Trump. Detailed in her recent book about her uncle.

Hang their heads in shame

Yet so many Republicans and so many conservative commentators defended and even campaigned for Trump for years. They should now hang their collective heads in total shame.

The whole point of conservatism is to defend the status quo and defend institutions. Trump has done neither. He has torn at the fabric of American society and he has undermined institutions throughout his presidency.

Now the rebuild must start for Republicans. The once great establishment party of America needs to find its philosophical soul in the wake of Trump’s demise. It wont be easy. Populists have stormed its ranks. So too extremists like Qanon. All spurred on by the capitulation of the Republican establishment as Trump rose.

The only pathway to redemption is to acknowledge the mistakes of the recent path. In a strange way Trump losing it as badly as he now has should help with that. It makes it easier to walk away from his craziness. That’s why we have seen editorials in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post so scathing of Trump and what he is doing.

But we need to always remember the collective stupidity and lack of decency that saw so many people who should know better puff up this president long before now.

We all make mistakes, but unleashing a demagogue on the White House was a big one.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.