The First Day

The only really surprising news in yesterday's first day of the Trump impeachment trial was Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA) voting in support of the constitutionality of the proceeding - joining the 5 other Republicans whose vote had been expected and the 50 Democrats. Almost four hours of legal argument led to an otherwise utterly unsurprising outcome. On the other hand, by the Senate's vote, one constitutional question has now been definitively resolved: the Senate can legitimately try a president after the end of his term, at least one who was impeached while still in office.

That said, even if (apart from Cassidy) the Senators' minds were all made up in advance, and thus the arguments of the House Managers and the former president's defense team really didn't sway any actual votes, those arguments were also aimed at a larger American audience, which could hardly help but notice both the difference in quality between the two sets of presentations and the intensely dramatic effect of the Managers' video presentation of what happened on January 6.

Exactly why the former president's lawyers did such a transparently poor job is an interesting question. Of course, they had had little time to prepare and had by far the more difficult case to argue. Stylistically, the first Trump lawyer seemed to ramble and appeared at times to want to flatter the Senate, while the second lawyer just seemed angry and partisan. Trump's "Defense" was also surprisingly incoherent and inconsistent. On the one hand, they argued that Trump's due process rights were denied him by the House moving too quickly to impeach (as if those voting hadn't themselves been witnesses and victims of the crime in question), only then to argue that the process of moving to trial was too slow! (The lawyer also blamed Speaker Pelosi for the latter problem, whereas in fact it was then Majority Leader McConnell who would not allow the Senate to resume sitting until the day before the inauguration.)

In contrast, the House Managers did an amazing job, focusing on the central points at issue in this case - the incontrovertibly violent threats and actions perpetrated against Congress and the Capitol in support of Trump's lies about the election - and the absurdity of assuming what they termed a "January exception" to impeachment. The full horror of what Trump and his mob did, during their attempt to derail the constitutional process of counting the electoral votes, was powerfully on display in the 13-minute video with which the House Managers's presentation began. It is expected that in the coming days we may see more video, recalling more horror. That 44 Republicans remain impervious to this horror only highlights the moral bankruptcy of that party.

"This cannot be the future of America," Rep. Raskin warned. 

While the specific issue being debated yesterday was the narrow one of the actual constitutionality of this particular process, the larger issue is the long-term viability of constitutional and democratic governance. The larger issue is the future of America.

The Trial Begins (or, Rather, Resumes)

Today, former President Trump's second impeachment trial will begin in the U.S. Senate. This unprecedented event represents a response by Congress to the unprecedented terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, when Trump infamously incited his MAGA mob to try to forestall the counting of the electoral votes. The one (and only) Article of Impeachment addresses this particular alleged "high crime." So this is not, formally speaking, a continuation of last year's first Trump impeachment event. And yet it is in a sense a resumption of that previous proceeding, its second act of that necessary historical reckoning, a second chance for the country to come to terms with what we as a nation have had to live through these past four years. Tragically, it will likely also have the same conclusion - a colossal failure to come to terms with what has happened to us as a nation. 

Over the course of our country's history, eight federal officials have been removed from office after impeachment by the House and trial by the Senate. Three presidents (Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump) have been impeached, but none has ever been convicted. Given the high bar (a 2/3 vote of the Senators) for conviction and given the close partisan divisions in the modern Senate, it may be that no president will ever be convicted and that presidential impeachment will either return to being the dead letter it became in the century after the Johnson impeachment or just the theatrical partisan political performance it became when Clinton was impeached.

That said, unlike the case against Andrew Johnson for breaking a law that should not have been passed, unlike the case against Bill Clinton for lying in response to a question that should not have been asked, and unlike the first case against Trump for an ambiguous off-stage telephone call in the confusing context of international relations, the case this time is clear - the former president's provocative public actions leading to a mob's criminal behavior, all widely watched live at the time and repeatedly seen subsequently. An acquittal, if that is the outcome, will not alter the facts of what happened but will enable alternative interpretations and evaluations of what happened and of the larger Trump phenomenon, a fog of "fake news" to keep clouding our ability to come to terms with our past and move productively forward to some sort of satisfactory national future.

A vote by Senate Republicans to acquit the former president would represent a continued endorsement of the falsehoods about the election, which Tump personally promoted and which continue to dominate Republican party politics, especially in certain states.

Meanwhile the Senate will waste its time today debating the constitutionality of the process. Under normal circumstances, process arguments are an important part of political debate. Process is key to constitutional and democratic governance, and what Trump and his mob are accused of is essentially an attack on the process which is at the heart of constitutional and democratic governance - elections.

Today's process argument, however, is manifestly a distraction - a deliberate avoidance of the substantive issue the Senate is supposed to adjudicate. Admittedly the constitutional text is ambiguous. It neither explicitly authorizes nor explicitly excludes the impeachment and trial of a federal official after he or she has left office. The precedents, however, are less ambiguous.

The famous British impeachment trial of Warren Hastings, accused of misconduct in India, began and continued for several years after Hastings had already returned from India. This trial was going on at the very time the constitution was written and its ratification was being debated. Also at that time, some states explicitly allowed the impeachment and trial of officials after leaving office. Against this background, the federal Constitution's silence on this issue does not support the view that the framers would have excluded this practice. And, of course there is the famous Belknap precedent - Secretary of War William Belknap, who was impeached and tried in 1876, although he had already resigned his office in order to avoid impeachment. The contrary example, of course, would be Nixon in 1974.  After Nixon resigned, the House did not move forward with the Articles of Impeachment which the Judiciary committee had already approved. Clearly the country in 1974 was eager to turn the page. That probably was a prudent political decision in 1974, but it does not negate those other precedents.  A political choice not to impeach and try a former official does not create a constitutional prohibition against doing so.

Also, thanks to the 22nd Amendment, Nixon was already ineligible to run for president again anyway. So the corollary of conviction in the Senate - disqualification for running for office again - would have been moot. Trump's case is completely different. Trump's alleged offense was far more egregious than anything Nixon did and continues in the anti-constitutional and anti-democratic direction adopted by the contemporary Republican party, which persists as a serious abiding danger to constitutional and democratic governance.

He "helped her up"

Some Thoughts on this 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 7, 2021.

For almost a year now, the entire world’s attention has been captured by the covid pandemic, which has upended all our lives in ways we had never expected. Now, with the successful development of various vaccines, we are all hoping to see, sometime soon, the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. But what a tunnel it has been! It is a tunnel which still divides us along political lines, where whether or not to take proper precautions, like mask-wearing and social distance, is seen as an expression of one's political allegiance! And the much sought for solution, the vaccine, itself risks dividing us again along class and other lines, causing fellow citizens to compete rather than row together through this storm. However much we may want to say that we are all in this together, in fact this pandemic has over and over again revealed the divisions and fault lines in our society. As Pope Francis has written: "For all our hyper-connectivity, we witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all" (Fratelli Tutti 7).

 

That said, sickness remains certainly one of the more universal human experiences. While some may get to go through life luckily blessed by generally better health than others, few get to escape any sickness at all. And even the many who have been somehow spared infection by the present plague have nonetheless lived for almost a year in a constant state of anxiety about the possibility of infection - months of misery ... filled with restlessness (Job 7:3-4).

As Job's sad story reminds us, in illness we experience how powerless we really are, how limited our control; and, like Job, we may feel discourage, angry, and fearful, that I shall not see happiness again (Job 7:7).

Judging from this Sunday’s Gospel (Mark 1:29-39), Jesus spent a lot of his time curing the sick, liberating people from the various physical and spiritual disabilities that had hitherto overpowered them. That seems to be why and how his reputation spread.

So, when Jesus entered Simon and Andrew’s house and heard that Simon’s mother-in-law lay sick with a fever, Jesus grasped her by the hand and helped her up – a scene so encouraging that it could have lifted even Job out of his depression! In doing this, by healing the sick, Jesus was revealing his Father to us – demonstrating God’s care for us. The Gospel says he grasped her by the hand. Touching is one of those things people tend to be especially squeamish about with the sick - something we have deliberately shied away from, individually and as a society, thanks to this pandemic, something we may now be missing more than we know. 

But Jesus often touched the people he healed, even when he risked ritual impurity by doing so. With that one simple gesture, Jesus joined himself with the sick and suffering who were stuck at the margins of normal social activity. In so doing, he summarized the story of his life, his mission to become one with us and so to empower us to get up and live that fuller life God really wants us to live.

Good news travels fast. Soon, the whole town was gathered at the door. And so it has been ever since as the Church continues Christ’s life and mission in our world – caring for the sick and accompanying them with the Church’s prayer.

The same God who cares enough to touch us, by becoming one of us in his Son, continues to bring us together in the same struggle against suffering. Yes, sickness separates people - straining, limiting, even destroying normal social activities and relationships. In Jesus’ presence, however, the healthy were drawn to become part of the healing process. In the gospel story, the first thing the disciples did was to tell Jesus about Simon’s mother-in-law, to involve him in her situation. Later on, when other sick people were brought to Jesus, they didn’t come alone. The whole town brought them.

This Thursday, February 11, we will celebrate the festival of Our lady of Lourdes. More maybe than any other single site, Lourdes is known as one of those special places to which pilgrims have come from all over the world to seek physical and spiritual healing.  I have been there several times and have always been inspired to witness the compassionate and loving way in which the sick are welcomed and enabled to participate in all the various activities there. Since 1997, February 11 has been observed as the Church’s annual World Day of the Sick – so designated by Saint John Paul II as “a special time of prayer and sharing, of offering one’s suffering for the good of the Church and of reminding us to see in our sick brother and sister the face of Christ who, by suffering, dying, and rising, achieved the salvation of the human race.”

This year, in this pandemic-ravaged world, the annual world Day of the Sick speaks to us even more urgently of the solidarity sickness always attacks and which this pandemic in particular has attacked - and of the resulting imperative, illustrated in Jesus' own actions, to recover that solidarity as a society.

In his invocation at the Inauguration Eve Covid Memorial service on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., Cardinal Wilton Gregory said it so well: “Our sorrow unites us to one another as a single people with compassionate hearts. May our prayer strengthen our awareness of our common humanity.”

Photo: Rembrandt van Rijn (1609–1669), The Healing of the Mother-in-Law of Saint Peter
(late 1650s).

Congress On the Record

As Jonathan Kirshner recently wrote in  "Gone But Not Forgotten: Trump's Long Shadow and the End of American Credibility," Foreign Affairs (March/April 2021), "the world cannot unsee the Trump presidency. (Nor, for that matter, can it unsee the way members of the U.S. Congress behaved in the final weeks of the Trump administration, voting opportunistically to overturn an election and helping incite violence at the Capitol.)"

Kirshner was considering the impact on international relations, but the point applies as much (or maybe more) at home. Thus it was that, this week, the members of the House of Representatives had to cast a public, on-the-record vote (in contrast to an earlier, cowardly secret ballot on Liz Cheney in the Republican Caucus) on whether or not to allow the now infamous freshman congresswoman from Q-Anon to sit on congressional committees - in other words, whether or not to hold her personally accountable for her hateful and threatening behavior. The House as a whole rose to this unprecedented challenge and voted 230-199 to remove Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from her congressional committees, and eleven Republicans joined the 219 Democrats in voting "Yes" on the motion. But 199 Republicans publicly voted “No” - in other words, announcing to the entire world their unwillingness to express public disapproval of hateful and threatening behavior, even when directed at fellow congressmen and congresswomen and thus undermining the very institutions at the heart of constitutional governance.

For better or for worse, the institutions of American politics push us toward a two-party system, which means that, instead of multiple parties competing for votes in an election and then forming coalitions afterwards in order to govern, we are saddled with two parties competing for votes, parties which themselves are inevitably themselves pre-election coalitions. Both parties' coalitions inevitably include centrist and more extreme elements. In the contemporary Republican party, however, what is left of the center-right, "conservative," "establishment" component of the Republican coalition is increasingly diminished, while the more extreme, anti-democracy, "populist" faction seems to be increasingly in charge. The growing size and power of this more extreme, anti-democracy, "populist" base of the party is not so much a creation of the Trump presidency as it is something more fully revealed and empowered by the Trump presidency, Trump having figured out how to capitalize effectively on the political bankruptcy of the "conservative" elite.

That said, a two-party democracy depends on both parties sharing a common commitment to constitutional democratic institutions and practices - at minimum, for example, elections and the peaceful acceptance of the legitimacy of electoral outcomes and a constitutive commitment to peaceful political competition, which precludes threatening or seeming to threaten public officials. That most Republican members of the House voted in support of Representative Greene and that so many (even under the protective cover of a secret ballot) voted against Representative Cheney does not auger well for the present and future health of American, two-party, constitutional democracy.

Honor and Dishonor at the Capitol

The remains of Officer Brian Sicknick, the Capitol Police officer who was killed, trying to protect the Capitol from the Trump mob four weeks ago on January 6, are "lying in honor" in the Capitol Rotunda today, prior to his interment at Arlington National Cemetery. (Officer Sicknick had joined the Capitol Police in 2008 after serving in the New Jersey Air National Guard and was 42 when he was killed.) “The U.S. Congress is united in grief, gratitude and solemn appreciation for the service and sacrifice of Officer Brian Sicknick,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in their joint statement. 

Meanwhile, in the wake of January 6, Congress continues to remain dishonorably disunited when it comes to what to do about its problem members. Apparently, some House Republicans would like to oust Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House Republican Caucus because of her vote (along with nine other Republicans) to impeach President Trump for his role in inciting the mob that assaulted the Capitol on January 6 in the very same event that got Officer Sicknick killed.

Even worse, so far at least, there appears little likelihood that the House Republicans  will seriously challenge the truly problematic members of their caucus, whose offenses against congressional civility and ordinary common decency are by now known widely both in Congress and around the country.

The contrast could not be more clear - between the honorable life and death of a Capitol Police Officer and the dishonorable behavior of certain members, between the honorable congressional response to the former and the (thus far) dishonorable response to the latter.