Last week an item on a Pittsburgh TV station news broadcast reported a school superintendent who was fired because of a DUI. I didn’t know the details, but he may have lost his job because he had a second glass of wine at dinner or maybe he just drank way too much before driving. Drinking and driving will be the subject of another blog, but that a person lost his job due to a single infraction where other remedies could have been made is the point that I want to make. Locally we have seen a police chief and a mayor lose their jobs due to minor infractions that many would not believe rose to the level of being fired. Some time ago, a friend of mine was fired from a local factory for not following a procedure correctly. He added a step that had been in the procedure before it was revised to speed up production. There was no harm to the product, the machinery or fellow workers. His supervisor did not like him, so he lost his job. The company lost twenty years of experience when they could have given him a written warning and retrained him. He made somebody irate and gave them a chance to get even for past grievances.
Firing someone for poor performance, bad behavior or committing a crime is expected but using personal feelings and personal standards has never been excepted as valid. So what does this have to do with impeachment? Impeachment is the start or indictment of a president or judge for the purpose of removal from office or firing them. We have had two previous impeachments and now another forthcoming with President Trump. Three presidents will have been indicted on charges of high crimes and misdemeanors. The House of Representatives has taken the place of the arresting officer in the DUI case and then the judge that arraigned him. The Senate will be the prosecutor, defender and jury, with the chief justice of the Supreme Court presiding. The charges under which he has been arraigned will be the high crimes and misdemeanors. With Trump there are two charges.
The Clinton impeachment has been recalled by the media, and in most cases they have referred to the cause as his affair with a young woman and the felony of lying to a Grand Jury after which he lost his law license. I remember a different reason, and that was his low moral behavior as he was accused of sexual assault and rape by multiple women. He was not prosecuted for these alleged crimes but many in the public believed he should have been. His party followers ignored the charges and the opposing party wanted him to pay for the alleged crimes. It became a political mess and, although there was some bi-partisan action, ended up a party line vote in the Senate to acquit him. Looking back on this it would have been better for Congress to censure him for his immoral activity and refrain from the political mess that they ended up in. This whole debacle ended up with recriminations for the next ten years, and we are still not completely over it.
President Trump came into power without owing any political baggage, and by funding his campaign he escaped the lobbyists’ effort to sway his future actions. This was the first time in my voting lifetime that this has happened. He started his campaign by giving his opponents names that were not very nice and continued this effort into the campaign after winning the nomination. He tweeted little messages that rankled his opponents and the media. It soon became apparent that most of the media, both print and TV, were rooting for Hillary and against him. He called them out on this and called them his favorite names. He tweeted that they lied and could not tell the truth about his campaign, and as he did this he gave them more fuel to disparage him. The fight got really nasty, and it was apparent to most that Hillary would win without any trouble. She did not win, and she with her fellow Democrats and the media were stunned. Reasons for the outcome started immediately and soon the Russians were the reason for defeat. Hillary could not have lost the election unless it was fixed. Removing Trump the imposter from office was the immediate response from the Democrats, and the impeachment that we see now started the day after the election in 2016.
The two articles of impeachment are quite weak with the “abuse of power” referring to his phone call to Ukraine, and “obstruction of Congress” referring to his withholding information that had been asked for by the House investigators. The first article was reached by hearsay since there is no direct proof that the president withheld anything for the release of aid, and the second declares that the president does not have the right to a judicial review of protected material such as previous presidents had including Nixon. The impeachment of Trump is much the same as with Clinton because it is based upon bias against their actions and their removal from power. Clinton showed a moral character that was below what many felt was appropriate for a president. Yet he did lie and commit a felony, but so do all politicians lie and that was not the real reason the Republicans pushed the impeachment through. It continued even though there was little chance that he would be removed from office. We see the same thing happening again. Democrats have been trying to find a reason to push the impeachment of Trump through since his inauguration. The Mueller Report took away their big avenue, so there has been a constant vigil to find something else. I’m not sure there was a whistleblower since his revelation fell apart when the transcript of the call to Ukraine was released. The hatred of this president is unprecedented in my lifetime, and it has been shared by much of the media both print and visual. What is most troublesome to me is that both Clinton and Trump had done a spectacular job while they were in office up to the point of impeachment. Clinton had a balanced budget by working with Newt Gingrich in Congress, and Trump has the most dynamic economy, with huge new trade deals that we have never seen before. The fact that Congress has ignored the positive jobs of both of these men is very troublesome and shows us their true motive of power and self-aggrandizement.
Trump has been characterized as a dictator and wielding the power of a king when it is Pelosi who has refused to let the Congress debate and vote on many important bills such a trade pacts and lowering drug costs for the American people. She alone controls 233 votes in Congress and has more power than anyone else in government to affect change in the issues before them such as immigration. It has been popular for the Democrats and media to ridicule the president because he followed the laws on immigration and used the previous administration’s methods when the Congress that objects has the power to change the immigration laws but has refused to act. It is also very evident that the Democratic Party, which used to pride itself of being the party of the blue-collar worker and the poor and disenfranchised, has the last two Democratic presidents who came into office without any wealth to leave office and shortly become multimillionaires. I wonder if there is anyone left in politics who really wants to do their elected job and follow the oaths that they swear to. God help us!
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