An entire month has gone by since the House of Representatives last impeached Donald Trump. That is undoubtedly a sign that something is very wrong with America. The last impeachment was way back on January 13, so what has the House been doing since then? Are our elected representatives neglecting their constitutional duty? If they are not impeaching the 45th president, then what good are they? Are American tax dollars being wasted on these folks?
Fear not, though, dear reader. House Democrats have surely taken to heart the old adage that the third time is a charm, and so we can rest assured that even now, they are mustering their energy and rooting through garbage cans all over Florida for evidence of another impeachable offense.
They have learned now that Teflon Don is an easy man to impeach but not an easy man to convict. Like the Cleveland Browns going into that third game of every season, the Democrats are 0-2. Donald Trump may be on a mission to rack up more acquittals than Tom Brady has Super Bowl rings.
Born to be Impeached
Some say Democrats planned to impeach Trump the moment he was declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Some say that determination was made when he began to pull ahead of his Republican competitors in the primaries of that year. Others contend that his political enemies began plotting against him the very day Mary Anne Trump, née MacLeod, revealed to the world that she was pregnant.
Whatever the truth, Donald John Trump remains, to this day, supremely unconvicted, despite the fact that Democrats did not just impeach him, but they impeached the bejesus out of him. Like a punch-drunk bare-knuckle boxer, he just keeps getting up, seconds before the ref calls the fight.
Unintended Consequences
Rather than achieving their goal of banishing Mr. Trump forever from American politics, his detractors on the left have created something that is so much more damaging to the system of government in the last truly free country on Earth. They have cheapened the very instrument of impeachment itself.
Henceforth, anybody can be impeached at any time and for any reason. When discussing the system of government in the United States, people love to talk about checks and balances. Impeachment was the ultimate check and the ultimate balance. Thanks to zealous Democrats, that is no longer the case.
Impeachment, it seems, is something that can now happen at a moment’s notice, whether the targeted individual is a public official or not. Tweet something bad about the government? Impeached. Refuse to wear your mask in the grocery store? Impeached. Expressing reservations about getting your experimental vaccine? Oh, brother, you are so impeached. That old lady at the front of the line at the checkout who’s paying with a combination of coupons, a check, and bitcoin? For the love of God, somebody impeach her. Who knows where it will end.
It might be too optimistic to hope that elected officials have finally learned a valuable constitutional lesson. The reason for their most recent failure is right there in America's founding document. The process of impeachment was designed specifically not to be a frivolous exercise in political contrarianism.
The Founders made impeachment – or, more specifically, conviction of an impeached official – a high bar to reach. It was supposed to be reserved for ridding the government of officials who had committed crimes so heinous and so eminently provable that the overwhelming majority of sitting U.S. senators would support the banishment of the individual in question. Democrats still have not learned this lesson. Indeed, Republicans also failed to understand it when they impeached President Bill Clinton.
It is simply not possible to impeach and convict a government official unless his or her transgression was so beyond the pale that political partisanship must give way to honest governance and the best interests of the nation. One can only hope that America's elected federal officials – who are, unfortunately, neither the best nor the brightest of us – will have learned a lesson from the debacle that recently took place on the Senate floor.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
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