Opinion | The Incredible Shrinking Impeachment
Americans will decide in 11 months whether Trump deserves to remain in office. But they should also keep the impeachment vote very much in mind when they decide whether Democrats deserve to keep the House.
Whatever happened to bribery and extortion? Democrats spent weeks talking them up as the crimes of Trump’s Ukraine interventions.
Democrats changed their narrative to “abuse of power,” a phrase general enough for anything Congress wants to stuff into it. They don’t even pretend any more to prove a quid pro quo. Instead they assert that Trump, in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, “solicited the interference of a foreign government” in the 2020 election “in pursuit of personal political benefit.” They also assert that this “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.”
Their problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t withhold military aid to Ukraine, and even if he had he would have merely been returning to Barack Obama’s policy of denying lethal aid. How would that have jeopardized national security? Every President also solicits actions from foreign leaders that he hopes will help him politically at home.
As for corrupting the 2020 election, even if Ukraine had announced an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, Trump couldn’t know how effective it would be, how long it would take, or whether it might even exonerate them. The election is still a year away. If the mere announcement of a foreign government’s investigation into corruption can poison a U.S. election, then American democracy must be weaker than even its enemies think.
Americans will decide in 11 months whether Trump deserves to remain in office. But they should also keep the impeachment vote very much in mind when they decide whether Democrats deserve to keep the House.
Whatever happened to bribery and extortion? Democrats spent weeks talking them up as the crimes of Trump’s Ukraine interventions.
Democrats changed their narrative to “abuse of power,” a phrase general enough for anything Congress wants to stuff into it. They don’t even pretend any more to prove a quid pro quo. Instead they assert that Trump, in his phone call with Ukraine’s president, “solicited the interference of a foreign government” in the 2020 election “in pursuit of personal political benefit.” They also assert that this “compromised the national security of the United States and undermined the integrity of the United States democratic process.”
Their problem is that Mr. Trump didn’t withhold military aid to Ukraine, and even if he had he would have merely been returning to Barack Obama’s policy of denying lethal aid. How would that have jeopardized national security? Every President also solicits actions from foreign leaders that he hopes will help him politically at home.
As for corrupting the 2020 election, even if Ukraine had announced an investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden, Trump couldn’t know how effective it would be, how long it would take, or whether it might even exonerate them. The election is still a year away. If the mere announcement of a foreign government’s investigation into corruption can poison a U.S. election, then American democracy must be weaker than even its enemies think.
