Impeachment: Why Not? (Reason 3)

[edelsont]

In the last entry (http://edelsont.dreamwidth.org/3099.html), I had more to say about some possible grounds for impeachment of Donald Trump, grounds which I had originally laid out two entries earlier than that.  I said that impeachment on those grounds (while I do think it justified) would be difficult: in particular, that it would be difficult to get public acceptance for it, because it doesn't fit very well with people's preconceptions about what "grounds for impeachment" ought to look like.

This is as good a place as any to acknowledge a sad fact.  There is a segment of the public which will, almost certainly, never "accept" the impeachment of Trump, no matter what grounds are given.  Perhaps not even if he stood in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shot someone (to repurpose an example which he himself offered, during the 2016 general election campaign).  I'm not sure how they would justify rejecting impeachment after he did that, but I am confident that they would find a way.  Calling it justifiable homicide, perhaps.

But I digress.  It's probably true that you'll never convince everybody, but still.  My original suggested grounds for impeachment, namely failure to defend against Russian hacking, face some particular obstacles which are not common to every imaginable case for impeachment.  So it's not unreasonable to ask whether we really need to undertake to do it the hard way.  In other words ....

Reason Three: Perhaps an Easier Way Will Turn Up

Perhaps, for example, solid evidence will turn up that Mr. Trump has, indeed, committed an actual crime.  A serious one, and one that is clearly relevant to whether we can continue to entrust him with the powers of the presidency.  Alternatively, maybe he will commit one, with those same properties ... and nice and easy to prove.

Or, of course, perhaps not.  Perhaps no such evidence of a suitable past crime will turn up.  There's more than one reason why it might not; in particular, we can't rule out with certainty the possibility that he hasn't committed one.

And it's conceivable that he might manage to avoid criminal transgressions going forward, as well.  So where does that leave us?

I shall answer that question with another question: What do we mean by "us"?

What I mean is: people who would prefer that Donald Trump not finish his first term as president.  That is, in effect, an unspoken assumption behind this whole series of journal entries.

Now let me clarify right away: I don't mean to assert that I am entitled to assume this.  I don't claim that "any reasonable person" would share this preference.  All I mean, in calling this an "assumption," is that what I am writing is primarily addressed to those who do share it.  That's because those are the people who have the clearest reason to care about the questions that I am raising.

The most recent of those questions is "Where does that leave us?"  In the context, what that means is: given that we would prefer that Trump not finish his term ... and given that I have offered a case for impeachment that could, perhaps, be successfully pursued, but with difficulty ... and given that an easier way to make the case for removing him from office might turn up, but also might not ... what should we do now?

That depends.  (Of course it does, but on what?)  Well, each of the three considerations noted in the last paragraph is a matter of degree.  Here are three questions:

• How important (and urgent) is it to you that Trump not finish his first term?

• How feasible do you think that it would be to bring about an impeachment based on grounds like my suggested "failure to protect us from hacking by the Russians"?

• How likely do you think it is that more straightforward grounds for impeachment will come along?

Now imagine that you could express your answer to each of those questions in the form of a number.  And let's make the question, "What should we do now?", more specific: "Should we be trying to make a case for impeachment based on 'failure to protect'?"

Then I suggest that:

• The higher your numerical answer to the first question ("How important?"); and

• the higher your answer to the second ("How feasible?"); and

• the lower your answer to the third ("How likely?") ...

... the more likely it is that you "should" answer the final question, "Should we be trying to make a case ...?", with a "yes".  Or in summary: if you want the result, and you think "doing it the hard way" is feasible, and you aren't very confident that an easier way will come along ... then go ahead and try to do it the hard way.

I've presented a sort of decision procedure: suppose that you are a member of the House of Representatives, and you are already personally convinced that impeaching President Trump is a good idea (meaning some combination of: it would be better for the country, and the reasons for doing so also fit the "permissible" grounds for impeachment, under your own interpretation of the Constitution).  So you have to decide whether publicly to start a move for impeachment, now, or wait.  What goes before, in this journal entry, is offered as a possible framework for making that decision.

Before finishing, I want to mention that this "decision procedure" could, perhaps, be generalized somewhat.  In particular, one might allow for different versions of what counts, within the procedure, as "doing it the hard way."

So far, I've used that phrase to represent a particular "hard way" of arguing for impeachment: the one based on the theory first laid out three entries ago, under the heading "Impeachment: Are We There Yet?" (http://edelsont.dreamwidth.org/2719.html).  That theory, again, was that we have an "impeachable offense" sitting right in front of us, with no need to wait for more findings from the special prosecutor's investigation; and that "offense" consists of a failure to defend us against Russian efforts to interfere with our election (even if Trump had done nothing actively in support of that interference).

But our hypothetical Congressbeing could have something else in mind, as her example of "doing it the hard way."  That is, she could believe that something else that Trump has done, and that we already know about, constitutes grounds for impeachment.  Furthermore, in order for it to count as "the hard way," it would have to be similar to my specific example in some ways: her "impeachable offense" would have to be something other than a crime explicitly defined as such in the statute books, and/or something for which we do not [yet] have evidence sufficient to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

In any such case that we could imagine, she would be in a similar position to the one we found ourselves in, starting with my own specific example of an alleged, publicly-known "impeachable offense."  That is, in deciding whether to wade in, and make an all-out effort to procure an actual vote for impeachment on her chosen grounds, she'd have to balance how strongly she felt about it, and the difficulty of persuading her colleagues to agree, against the likelihood that the same result might be procured more easily, if she waited for something more like a "smoking gun" to be offered up by the special prosecutor's investigation.

And therefore, my "decision procedure" could be useful in a wide range of cases, not just in the particular one which I dreamed up, having to do with failure to protect the nation from Russian hacking.

That "decision procedure" is way cool, is it not, even if I say so myself?  It's almost like an algorithm that could be run on a computer.  You just plug in your three input numbers, turn the crank, and then act according to the results.

You're welcome.