The impeachment dilemma | Beyond cruelty
Hello friends!
In this week's newsletter:
(1) A Q&A with William Howell, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Chicago, about the Democrats' dilemma on whether to move forward with impeachment.
(2) A short note on the inadequacy of the term "cruel" in describing Trump's immigration agenda.
(3) What I'm reading.
To impeach or not to impeach?
Special counselor Robert Mueller's public statement last week, which all but recommended that Democrats pursue the impeachment of the president, spurred new House Democrats and prominent 2020 contenders like Sen. Cory Booker to say that it's time to initiate impeachment proceedings against Trump.
Momentum is growing on the Hill and on the presidential campaign trail, but for now, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is continuing to hold off on it. She's concerned that impeachment is "divisive" and could end up blowing up in her party's face when 2020 rolls around.
I emailed William Howell, a leading scholar of the presidency at the University of Chicago, to ask him to shed some light the debate that Democrats are having on the pros and cons of impeachment.
This interview has been edited lightly for clarity.
ZA: Democrats who oppose impeachment say that that they'll be especially divisive and could backfire politically. What does history say about how the public responds to impeachment hearings?
WH: I’m not sure how much of a guide history will be, with the extraordinary levels of partisan polarization and the fragmented media market that characterize contemporary politics. We also only have two impeachments to draw upon: Andrew Johnson’s in 1868 and Bill Clinton’s 130 years later. Still, I do think that the concern is real. Trump is all but goading the Democrats to proceed with impeachment, which feeds into his larger effort to cast them as crazed and unhinged. Should Democrats move forward on this front, they’ll need to do so with discipline and laser-like focus on Trump’s abuses of power and anti-democratic offenses.
What do you make of claims that Republicans' calls for Bill Clinton to be impeached backfired when the Democrats won the 1998 midterms?
I don’t know of any evidence that impeachment played to Clinton’s political advantage. He won reelection well before impeachment proceedings began. His approval ratings remained high, most concede, primarily because the economy was so strong. And meanwhile, his legislative agenda was tied up in knots while Congress remained fixated on impeachment.
Right now impeachment is not particularly popular. But could initiating proceedings change public opinion?
Certainly. A good deal of the American public is simply tuning out the simmering conflict between the Trump administration and House Democrats. Bring it to a boil—as impeachment hearings undoubtedly would—and all this could change. Instructively, when Watergate hearings began in the Spring of 1974, only 19 percent of Americans thought that Nixon should be removed from office. Within a year, that number more than doubled. Now, of course, the American public was not as polarized then as it is now; and Nixon did not have a media equivalent of Fox News in his corner. But still, it’s at least possible that sustained hearings will train the attention of journalists—and with them, the American public—on Trump’s misbehaviors, and the politics will change as a result.
Mueller has done almost everything in his power to appear above the fray and non-partisan as possible throughout his probe — and it seems that's why he's declined to testify before Congress in the future as well. How much does his reputation matter for impeachment proceedings, and will his efforts to avoid mud-slinging in such a polarized era pay off in the way he expects?
In the short term, Mueller’s unwillingness to speak plainly about the subjects of his investigation and his views about Trump comes with political liabilities. Whereas Trump and his advocates, very much including Bob Barr, steadfastly and publicly insist that the president has been exonerated, Mueller communicates almost in code — when he communicates at all. It’s possible, though, that this rather reluctant, measured approach will pay dividends in the medium term, as political elites grapple with the contents of his report.
One of the big arguments from Democrats who oppose impeachment is that it could end up being a distraction from messaging on policy issues. But advocates for impeachment point out that with Dems controlling the House, stories like the GOP's assault on Obamacare can no longer drive the news cycle, and impeachment is a surer way to keep the perception of Trump as a threat alive. Which argument are you more convinced by?
There’s a third option, which I wish the Democrats would take. Charges of obstruction should be taken seriously, and they may well establish the basis for impeachment. That said, concerns about Russian interference in our elections—and, notably, the president’s utter failure of leadership to address it—should stand front and center of House deliberations. By highlighting this threat and drafting meaningful reforms to address it, Democrats can simultaneously do well by our country and highlight Trump’s distinctively unpresidential behavior in office. It is possible for Democrats to keep the political pressure on Trump while also attending to a very real threat to our democracy. They should do so.
Another big debate surrounds the idea of Trump being exonerated. The anti-impeachment crowd says that since the Republican-controlled Senate will not vote to remove Trump from office, an acquittal in the Senate will allow Trump to claim his name has been cleared and boost his credibility. The pro-impeachment crowd says that the damaging hearings coupled with the acquittal will only motivate angry voters even more to come finish the job in 2020.
This is a genuine point of contestation. Just as House Democrats can craft and highlight one message while they contemplate impeachment, Senate Republicans can advance another when they acquit, as they most likely will do. I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know how this will shake out. But I agree with those who recognize the political importance of Democrats not overreaching — that is, using their newfound majority status to undermine a democratically elected opponent, rather than, and here is the key distinction, insisting that the president abide by the rule of law and steadfastly attend to American interests. As I noted earlier, doing so plays into Trump’s narrative that Democrats have something of a political vendetta against him.
Setting aside political strategy, it seems to me that declining to even initiate proceedings to impeach Trump would set a disturbing precedent for future presidents. If he leaves office without it happening, what lessons might a future president take from this point in history?
I quite agree. Indeed, I think the stakes are even larger. It’s not just what future presidents will take away from this interlude, but what lessons about the rule of law and the appropriate standards of presidential behavior that all of us will draw. This debate over impeachment also has real implications, I think, for the future of the Republican Party. Should the House impeach this president, and should Republicans rally to his defense, it will be much more difficult downstream for them to disavow any responsibility for the damage wrought by this president. In important respects, then, it is not just Trump’s future that hands in the balance. It is all of ours.
Cruelty isn't the point
Last week news came out that the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General had recently discovered absolutely brutal living conditions at an El Paso border patrol processing facility:
The IG found "standing room only conditions" at the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center, which has a maximum capacity of 125 migrants. On May 7 and 8, logs indicated that there were "approximately 750 and 900 detainees, respectively."
"We also observed detainees standing on toilets in the cells to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to the toilets," the report states. The report was first obtained by CNN.
A cell with a maximum capacity of 12 held 76 detainees, another with a maximum capacity of eight held 41, and another with a maximum capacity of 35 held 155, according to the report.
"(Customs and Border Protection) was struggling to maintain hygienic conditions in the holding cells. With limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks," the report states.
Immigration horror stories like this come to light on a weekly basis, and Trump's critics tend to describe them using the word "cruel." On Twitter, in what appears to be an homage to an essay about the Trump presidency by The Atlantic's Adam Serwer, many people use the phrase "the cruelty is the point" while sharing reports of immigrant mistreatment.
There is of course no doubt that the Trump administration's record on immigration — probably the most effectively implemented Trumpian policy vision to date — is cruel. But the term strikes me as inadequate to capture what's really going on here.
Undocumented immigrants who are fleeing poverty and violence and looking for a better chance at life are being cast as rapists and criminals; surveilled and hunted and rounded up; held in centers beyond what's legally allowable; having their children confiscated; being made to live in their own waste; and shipped back to whatever dire conditions they tried escaping.
Calling this cruel or mean fails to capture the bigger picture here: to systematically dehumanize and degrade migrants who have been deemed undesirable, and it's part of a broader project to revive and expand the notion of US citizenry as, at its core, white. It's not just the borders of the US that are being demarcated, it's also the identity of the US. I use the term "US" specifically because this program is clearly meant to sever the US from its historical ties to the rest of the Americas, and heap scorn on the notion that the region constitutes a community with shared interests and responsibilities.
In Serwer's essay — which is about more than just immigration — he discusses the idea of Trump and his ilk as taking pleasure in the pain of others. There may be some element of that. But to me a lot of these immigration policies are predicated on the notion that Latino immigrants aren't full humans in the first place, that, on an essential level, they're not fit to be here. (Who comes from a "shithole country"? A shithole person.) The sadism, then, is blunted by the simple fact that I'm not sure Trump and his kind believe that the people they torture feel pain.
What I'm reading
Immigration and trade are Trump's safety blanket.
Finland is the only EU country where homelessness is falling. Here's why.
Will we be doomed by 2050?
How art can double as historical corrective.
2 maps show how every US state's economy could be affected by Trump's proposed Mexico tariffs.
Joe Biden has moved to the left on climate policy.
Turns out YouTube has a pedophile problem.
How impeachment works and what you need to know about it.
Elizabeth Warren wants to make it legal to indict presidents.
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