4 Reasons Impeachment Was Worth It

Despite Trump’s inevitable acquittal, Democrats made the right decision

Credit: Sarah Silbiger (Getty)

he Senate voted 51–49 against subpoenaing former National Security Advisor John Bolton, with Republicans Mitt Romney and Susan Collins joining Democrats in the unsuccessful effort. It’s a clear sign the Republican majority will vote next week to end Trump’s impeachment trial with an acquittal.

Like most, I never expected Republicans to remove the president. And since they’ve already decided how they’ll vote, testimony from Bolton would just embarrass them further, so their political logic is clear.

Nevertheless, Senate Republicans placing the president above the Constitution is a momentous decision. That it was expected does not diminish its significance.

The verdict may leave Democrats, rule-of-law conservatives, and other Trump critics feeling discouraged. But here are four reasons why impeachment was still worth it:

1 — Honored the Constitution

Donald Trump abused the powers of the presidency, breaking U.S. law to help secure his own re-election. It’s what Nixon did, but worse; a bigger conspiracy, lasting longer, involving more people, and impacting American foreign policy. It’s such an obvious example of an impeachable offense — see Federalist 65, the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Nixon, Clinton, common sense — that impeaching Trump was the correct decision under the rules of American governance.

If some Americans, in the Senate or elsewhere, want to act like that doesn’t matter, that’s on them. No one in Congress has to apologize for following the Constitution. But only one Republican in the House was swayed by this argument: Congressman Justin Amash, a Michigan conservative who left the GOP and voted for impeachment. (We’ll see what Romney and Collins do).

Some Republican senators might buy the president’s lies or his lawyers’ specious arguments. But the more honest ones, such as Lamar Alexander and Marco Rubio, openly acknowledge that Trump did it, it’s unconstitutional, and they’re going to acquit him anyway. Here’s Rubio:

Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office… I will not vote to remove the President because doing so would inflict extraordinary and potentially irreparable damage to our already divided nation.

On one level that’s absurd, giving a heckler’s veto to angry, potentially violent populists. The problem here is the president violating the Constitution, not Congress trying to uphold it. But in a practical sense, Rubio’s not wrong that the best way for America to answer the Trump question is an election.

It should be a fair election, not one in which the president uses the powers of his office to cheat. And yes, breaking the rules to gain an advantage in a contest is the definition of cheating, so violating the Constitution to gain electoral advantage is reasonably described as such, even if one can imagine worse ways to cheat.

But that’s the Catch-22 of this perilous moment in history. Trump isn’t playing fair in the election, yet the election is the only way to remove him.

2 — Revealed the Truth

We know a lot more about Trump’s Ukraine scheme thanks to impeachment. A July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zelensky — in which Zelensky brought up American military assistance and Trump immediately responded by asking for a personal favor — prompted officials who heard it to seek legal counsel. That led to a whistleblower complaint filed on August 12. Six weeks and numerous media reports later, the White House released a summary of the call, falsely claiming it was a full transcript.

It could’ve stopped there. Team Trump used the same play that got them through the Don Jr. email scandal, in which the president’s son told a representative of the Russian government who offered to help his father in the 2016 election “if it’s what you say I love it”: Deny it, and when that’s no longer tenable, admit it, say it’s no big deal, share some incriminating evidence and act like it isn’t incriminating, assume supporters and friendly media will fall in line, and hope that stops people from looking to see if it’s connected to any larger conspiracy.

Impeachment exposed the months-long effort, conducted off-the-books by Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, of which the phone call was a small part. Testimony from top national security and foreign policy officials, such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, helped the public understand how Trump and Giuliani distorted government functions. Ambassador Gordon Sondland explained that Trump wanted Zelensky to go on TV and announce investigations into Joe Biden and Ukraine’s alleged interference in the 2016 election, and Dr. Fiona Hill informed the public that the latter is a false conspiracy theory created by Russian intelligence.

The American people have a right to know all this. Not just for today, but for history. Political scientists, historians, lawyers, government reformers, and others will study it for decades.

Trump appears determined to hide as much of the truth as he can. He withheld documents, ordered material witnesses not to testify, and crafted an alternate narrative. In November, I wrote that the president designated “read the transcript” as his Big Lie, and he’s still going with that — along with its close cousin “a perfect phone call” — even as evidence has piled up against him. Some Trump supporters probably believe him. Some know it’s a lie and help sell it anyway.

Impeachment got details of the Ukraine scheme on the record and undermined Trump’s effort to lie about it. That, on its own, has value.

3 — Drew a Line

No president in U.S. history has been removed by impeachment, and we knew Trump wouldn’t be either. But it’s still useful for Congress to draw a line, pushing back on abuses of executive power.

Nixon directed CIA operatives to break into his opponents’ campaign offices in a hotel as part of a scheme to help himself win re-election. Presidents shouldn’t do that.

Clinton committed and suborned perjury, lying under oath and getting Monica Lewinsky to lie under oath as well. Presidents shouldn’t do that either.

A president also shouldn’t subvert U.S. law to extort a foreign country into lying as part of a scheme to help himself win re-election.

That’s what makes Trump’s acquittal so dangerous. Congress drew an important line in 1973, and it held for over 40 years. Trump crossed a very similar line, and the Senate voted to let it go, with some defenders offering variations on the discredited Nixon argument that “when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.” As Trump lawyer Alan Dershowitz put it:

If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.

It’s a ridiculous argument: unconstitutional, illogical, ahistorical, and un-American. The president is not above the law. We can only hope future presidents don’t take advantage of this precedent.

But a worse precedent would’ve been doing nothing. Drawing the line, and holding it as well as Congress held the line on perjury, is better than not drawing it at all.

Presidents don’t want to be impeached. It tarnishes their reputation and damages their legacy. And if they don’t care about that, it still takes up time and effort they could be spending on other things.

If Congress let the Ukraine scandal slide, it would signal that Trump’s behavior was fine. Impeaching him signals that it’s not fine, but you can get away with it if your party has enough senators. That’s bad, but the first one’s worse.

4 — Took up Time

Another reason that letting it slide would’ve been worse: Trump would’ve seen it as license. When the president learned of the whistleblower complaint, he released the illegally frozen funds. If Trump hadn’t been caught, he would’ve continued the scheme unimpeded, quite possibly getting the manufactured investigations he sought.

Though Trump can’t withhold military aid anymore, he’s still withholding a White House meeting that Zelensky wants and trying to get Ukraine’s president to help his re-election. But at least it’s exposed now.

The whistleblower complaint was filed August 12, and the public became aware of it later that month. The House’s impeachment inquiry began on September 24 and lasted into December. With the Senate finishing in early February, that’s almost six months of Trump under a spotlight he can’t control. Six months of the White House playing defense, rather than working to solicit foreign interference or otherwise using presidential power to gain electoral advantage.

Trump could easily try something now that he’s been acquitted. But he was already trying something, and without impeachment, his schemes would be in better shape.

Not 5 — Winning in 2020

Notice how I didn’t say anything about impeachment and acquittal helping or hurting Trump in the election? That’s because I don’t know. And I don’t think it should be the top consideration anyway. As I wrote in September, “instead of prioritizing inherently uncertain predictions about the political effects, I say we follow the Constitution and let the chips fall where they may.”

That said, predictions that impeachment would significantly change Trump’s re-election chances have not panned out. The president’s approval rating stayed within a tight range, basically the same it’s been for the last two years.

(Trump’s approval and disapproval since his inauguration in 2017 from FiveThirtyEight, with the impeachment period circled on the right)

Trump will claim exoneration after the Senate votes to acquit. But when the House hesitated to impeach, he used that to claim exoneration too. And when the Mueller report explicitly stated that the special counsel could not exonerate the president in the Russia investigation, Trump claimed exoneration anyway.

Polls on impeachment vary, but public opinion on removal tracks closely to Trump approval, indicating the impeachment itself had little effect. 75 percent of Americans, including a plurality of Republicans, said they wanted the Senate to hear from witnesses. But polls did not specify which witnesses, and it’s likely some saying yes were thinking of the whistleblower or Hunter Biden, rather than John Bolton.

A lot will happen between now and November. Who the Democrats nominate will make a difference. It will be impossible to pinpoint how impeachment affected the election. But no matter the results, it was the right thing to do.

However, if your priority is defeating Donald Trump, shining a spotlight on his impeachable offenses, undermining his efforts to cheat in the election, and disrupting his control of the media narrative was almost certainly better than the alternative.

The president violated the Constitution and Congress didn’t stop him. Checks and balances failed. But the American democratic system has a final backstop: voters.

Ultimately, it’s a trial by election.

Arc Digital

On what matters

Nicholas Grossman

Written by

Senior Editor at Arc Digital. Poli Sci prof (IR) at U. Illinois. Author of “Drones and Terrorism.” Politics, national security, and occasional nerdery.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade