On Tuesday night, President Trump delivered the most harshly partisan State of the Union speech in memory.
He was not wrong about everything, as when he boasted about the overall strength of the economy or praised the selflessness of American troops. But when he was wrong, as he often was, he was poisonously wrong. He grotesquely caricatured the criminality of undocumented immigrants, rewrote the history of his assaults on Americans’ health care and drastically inflated the number of jobs expected to be created by the new trade bill.
Worse than the distortions and deceptions, which Americans have come to expect from this president, Mr. Trump hijacked the House chamber, turning what should be a unifying moment, or at least an attempt at a unifying moment, into a campaign rally, corrupting the role presidents have played there as representing the whole nation.
Republicans put the Senate chamber to similarly political use on Wednesday. With the lonely exception of Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Mr. Trump of abuse of power, all Republican senators voted to acquit Mr. Trump of extorting a foreign government in an effort to rig the 2020 election, and then obstructing Congress’s efforts to investigate him — the charges contained in the two articles of impeachment approved by the House of Representatives in December.
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By the end, many Republicans had conceded that Mr. Trump did the things he was accused of. Some agreed that they were “improper,” “inappropriate” or even “wrong.” Yet rather than try to get to the bottom of his behavior, they joined the White House in covering up as much about it as they could.
Reasonable Americans may have concluded — after a full airing of the documents the White House has bottled up, of the witnesses it has smothered — that removal from office was too extreme a punishment. But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, turned out to have too little regard for Mr. Trump’s ethics, or for the American people’s sense of justice, or perhaps both, to take that chance.
Under Mr. McConnell’s guidance, the impeachment trial in the Senate was a joke at the Constitution’s expense. Anyone hoping for a demonstration of responsible governance or the vindication of the separation of powers could only be dismayed.
It did illustrate, however, how beholden Republicans are to Mr. Trump and his destructive approach to leadership. In that sense, the trial provided an important service to Americans, clarifying the stakes in the coming election.
Against all evidence to the contrary, some Republicans claim Mr. Trump has been chastened by his impeachment. He will be “much more cautious,” said Senator Susan Collins, adding that she hopes the president has “learned from this.”
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Indeed he has, but not the lessons that Ms. Collins seemed to think. Listen to Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and Ukraine whisperer. “Absolutely; 100 percent,” Mr. Giuliani told NPR when asked whether Mr. Trump would continue to push for more foreign “investigations” into Joe Biden, a Democratic front-runner. “I would have no problem with him doing it. In fact, I’d have a problem with him not doing it.”
Even before the acquittal, the State of the Union address made clear that Mr. Trump — enabled, as in his business life, by his exceptional shamelessness — intends to deploy every power available to a president in pursuit of his re-election. If there remained any doubts on that score, they were dispelled when Melania Trump hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Rush Limbaugh’s neck.
The speech also demonstrated that Mr. Trump, unlike the Democratic Party, has a simple, powerful message: In three short years, he has brought America back from the disaster he claimed it was in and set it on a path to a glorious new future. From the “American carnage” he spoke of in his Inaugural Address, now, “America’s future is blazing bright.”
Given the dishonesty, if not downright absurdity, of some passages in the speech, it was perhaps a human reaction on the part of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to tear it to shreds. It was still disappointing to see her stoop to the kind of stunt the president himself would pull, and, as she certainly knows as well as anyone, a gesture like that won’t defeat the president’s argument. So what will?
Not the incoherent, if not to say chaotic, display the Democratic Party has mustered to date. A series of overcrowded debates has failed to clarify the choices confronting voters. The decision to stage the first vote in monochromatic Iowa was a bad idea even before the Iowa Democratic Party had a meltdown on live television. A recent poll found that 45 percent of the supporters of the leading progressive candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, said they weren’t sure they’d vote for any other Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, over in the party’s centrist camp, Michael Bloomberg appears to be trying to buy the nomination.
Given the stakes, anxiety is rightly running high. Yes, the Democratic voters can and should narrow the field over the next several weeks. But the fact that they’ll eventually pick a nominee isn’t enough. It matters how they get there. The 2016 election is a cautionary tale — too many Democrats felt so little allegiance to the nominee that they chose to vote for a third-party candidate, or not to vote at all. The task ahead for party leaders is ensuring that voters appreciate that the best chance to beat Mr. Trump is a unity of effort from political tribes that share far more in common than what divides them.
That’s important, because the November election is a critical opportunity to defend the Republic through the straightforward expedient of voting Mr. Trump from office and thereby issuing an essential rebuke to the leaders of today’s Republican Party. Republican officials in Washington and across the country have for years refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of political opponents, and have thus justified taking any and all measures to keep them out of power, or to nullify their power when they hold it.
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Continue reading the main story
The G.O.P.’s internal corrosion also made it ripe for takeover by an authoritarian like Mr. Trump, under whom it is morphing into a cult of personality. Don’t take it from us; take it from conscientious conservatives and former Republicans, including top advisers to the last two Republican presidential nominees before Mr. Trump. Take it from Joe Walsh, the former representative from Illinois and conservative radio talk-show host who is running in the Republican primary. On Twitter, Mr. Walsh described telling a crowd of thousands of Iowa Republicans that Americans deserve a president who is decent, who tells the truth and who doesn’t care only about himself. The crowd booed.
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
He was not wrong about everything, as when he boasted about the overall strength of the economy or praised the selflessness of American troops. But when he was wrong, as he often was, he was poisonously wrong. He grotesquely caricatured the criminality of undocumented immigrants, rewrote the history of his assaults on Americans’ health care and drastically inflated the number of jobs expected to be created by the new trade bill.
Worse than the distortions and deceptions, which Americans have come to expect from this president, Mr. Trump hijacked the House chamber, turning what should be a unifying moment, or at least an attempt at a unifying moment, into a campaign rally, corrupting the role presidents have played there as representing the whole nation.
Republicans put the Senate chamber to similarly political use on Wednesday. With the lonely exception of Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Mr. Trump of abuse of power, all Republican senators voted to acquit Mr. Trump of extorting a foreign government in an effort to rig the 2020 election, and then obstructing Congress’s efforts to investigate him — the charges contained in the two articles of impeachment approved by the House of Representatives in December.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
By the end, many Republicans had conceded that Mr. Trump did the things he was accused of. Some agreed that they were “improper,” “inappropriate” or even “wrong.” Yet rather than try to get to the bottom of his behavior, they joined the White House in covering up as much about it as they could.
Reasonable Americans may have concluded — after a full airing of the documents the White House has bottled up, of the witnesses it has smothered — that removal from office was too extreme a punishment. But the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, turned out to have too little regard for Mr. Trump’s ethics, or for the American people’s sense of justice, or perhaps both, to take that chance.
Under Mr. McConnell’s guidance, the impeachment trial in the Senate was a joke at the Constitution’s expense. Anyone hoping for a demonstration of responsible governance or the vindication of the separation of powers could only be dismayed.
It did illustrate, however, how beholden Republicans are to Mr. Trump and his destructive approach to leadership. In that sense, the trial provided an important service to Americans, clarifying the stakes in the coming election.
Against all evidence to the contrary, some Republicans claim Mr. Trump has been chastened by his impeachment. He will be “much more cautious,” said Senator Susan Collins, adding that she hopes the president has “learned from this.”
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
Indeed he has, but not the lessons that Ms. Collins seemed to think. Listen to Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and Ukraine whisperer. “Absolutely; 100 percent,” Mr. Giuliani told NPR when asked whether Mr. Trump would continue to push for more foreign “investigations” into Joe Biden, a Democratic front-runner. “I would have no problem with him doing it. In fact, I’d have a problem with him not doing it.”
Even before the acquittal, the State of the Union address made clear that Mr. Trump — enabled, as in his business life, by his exceptional shamelessness — intends to deploy every power available to a president in pursuit of his re-election. If there remained any doubts on that score, they were dispelled when Melania Trump hung the Presidential Medal of Freedom around Rush Limbaugh’s neck.
The speech also demonstrated that Mr. Trump, unlike the Democratic Party, has a simple, powerful message: In three short years, he has brought America back from the disaster he claimed it was in and set it on a path to a glorious new future. From the “American carnage” he spoke of in his Inaugural Address, now, “America’s future is blazing bright.”
Given the dishonesty, if not downright absurdity, of some passages in the speech, it was perhaps a human reaction on the part of the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to tear it to shreds. It was still disappointing to see her stoop to the kind of stunt the president himself would pull, and, as she certainly knows as well as anyone, a gesture like that won’t defeat the president’s argument. So what will?
Not the incoherent, if not to say chaotic, display the Democratic Party has mustered to date. A series of overcrowded debates has failed to clarify the choices confronting voters. The decision to stage the first vote in monochromatic Iowa was a bad idea even before the Iowa Democratic Party had a meltdown on live television. A recent poll found that 45 percent of the supporters of the leading progressive candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, said they weren’t sure they’d vote for any other Democratic nominee. Meanwhile, over in the party’s centrist camp, Michael Bloomberg appears to be trying to buy the nomination.
Given the stakes, anxiety is rightly running high. Yes, the Democratic voters can and should narrow the field over the next several weeks. But the fact that they’ll eventually pick a nominee isn’t enough. It matters how they get there. The 2016 election is a cautionary tale — too many Democrats felt so little allegiance to the nominee that they chose to vote for a third-party candidate, or not to vote at all. The task ahead for party leaders is ensuring that voters appreciate that the best chance to beat Mr. Trump is a unity of effort from political tribes that share far more in common than what divides them.
That’s important, because the November election is a critical opportunity to defend the Republic through the straightforward expedient of voting Mr. Trump from office and thereby issuing an essential rebuke to the leaders of today’s Republican Party. Republican officials in Washington and across the country have for years refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of political opponents, and have thus justified taking any and all measures to keep them out of power, or to nullify their power when they hold it.
Advertisement
Continue reading the main story
The G.O.P.’s internal corrosion also made it ripe for takeover by an authoritarian like Mr. Trump, under whom it is morphing into a cult of personality. Don’t take it from us; take it from conscientious conservatives and former Republicans, including top advisers to the last two Republican presidential nominees before Mr. Trump. Take it from Joe Walsh, the former representative from Illinois and conservative radio talk-show host who is running in the Republican primary. On Twitter, Mr. Walsh described telling a crowd of thousands of Iowa Republicans that Americans deserve a president who is decent, who tells the truth and who doesn’t care only about himself. The crowd booed.
More at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
