This partisan impeachment inquiry is more than a waste of time. It imperils democracy

Let’s be honest here. These impeachment hearings are a total waste of time. Even as a show trial.

Not because President Donald Trump did nothing wrong. Actually, these days that doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? People know they know everything they want to know.

This so-called “impeachment inquiry” is a waste of time because most Americans — especially House Democrats — have already made up their minds. Who needs evidence now when the real verdict on Trump won’t come down until Nov. 3, 2020?

Seriously, do you know anyone who doesn’t already know that Trump is guilty? Or not?

Trump allegedly wanted Ukrainians to do something about the old Pennsylvanian whose son was way overpaid by a Ukrainian oligarch for doing nothing but having the same last name as his father. An aggressive American media might have jumped on that story first if it wasn’t one-sided.

So, this nation should go through the painful process of a blatant partisan impeachment when the same dump Trump decision could be made by the people who really matter — the voters — just 50 weeks hence.

House majorities are gonna do what House majorities do when the other party controls the White House: Raise political stinks to score political free throws. No one who isn’t getting paid for it is following every word of every question and every response.

The hope of Democrats is not that anyone hearing details is going to sink the reelection plans of a president who’s never had majority approval, not in the 2016 election and not in the polls ever since those first days in the office that Hillary Clinton knows she should occupy.

Their hope is that the smog of scandal will become so thick over many months that a decisive sliver of independent voters will decide there must be something there. And go along with the idea. Or maybe, as in 1998 after Bill Clinton’s impeachment, an even larger crowd will decide that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi should have stuck by her guns and blocked the rabid Never-Trumpers in her caucus.

But there’s an even bigger, far more important problem in these proceedings. Pelosi knows this. She talked about it candidly last March when she still thought she was in charge.

“Impeachment,” the speaker spoketh, “is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”

See, the Founding Fathers designed our system of government to be a messy, clumsy but delicate balance of powers with each branch of that government checking the other, thus making radical changes like officially ousting an elected president very difficult to accomplish. So difficult that Congress has never accomplished it.

The bewigged patrons didn’t like political parties at all. But humans being human, they agglomerated into groups with not-always admirable ambitions, as the Founders feared. Call them parties or gangs, they can behave collectively in ways that individuals shun.

Ever drive along a city street at night and see eight or 10 guys hanging around a corner and think to yourself, while driving briskly away, “There’s trouble waiting to happen”?

The trouble waiting to happen in this case is a partisan impeachment. Key word: partisan. Every single vote to proceed with the inquiry was cast by a Democrat. And actually, not all Democrats voted for it. All Republican votes were against.

It was, face it, like a vote of no confidence in a parliamentary government in, say, Italy, where previous governments have been known to endure several months. That’s not what we were meant to be in the United States. We have a lot of political frictions and fights. But we also have regular, scheduled elections to make collective decisions about who runs the federal show for a set period of time.

We came close to adopting a vote-of-confidence-like government in 1868 when the House overwhelmingly impeached Abraham Lincoln’s successor, the former tailor Andrew Johnson. The issue mainly was political personnel appointments. Remember, Johnson was never elected president; he inherited the office.

Fortunately, the Senate back then failed to convict him by one single vote. That was close.

So, Johnson finished the last 10 months of his term and let voters choose the next (Republican) president, Ulysses Grant.

For the 58th time in our national history on Nov. 8, 2016, we had a presidential election. And to the surprise of most everyone, possibly even the winner himself, Trump got just the right volume of votes in just the right places to capture 57% of the Electoral College that the Founding Fathers constructed to balance the power of big states and small ones.

Many liked that. Many didn’t and still don’t like those results. They’ve tried six ways to Sunday to systematically undermine the winner. The Russian collusion caper failed. Sexual scandals don’t work anymore. So, let’s try Ukraine.

We’ve all endured four or eight years of some chief executive we detested, disliked, distrusted or disagreed with. Putting up with that is the collective accommodation we each make to live and thrive in this imperfect but marvelous place.

But here’s the deal, plain and simple: If being an egotistical loudmouth and upset-election winner were disqualifying for a president, honestly, we wouldn’t be up to No. 45 now.

So, live with it. If you survived 2,922 days of Barack Obama, you can probably handle 350 more of Donald Trump. Then, vote your choice along with about 130 million other Americans. But don’t permit 232 partisan Democrats to overturn the country’s last national election — and radically change our form of governing.

This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 6:00 AM with the headline "This partisan impeachment inquiry is more than a waste of time. It imperils democracy."