Finally, A Responsible Adult In The Room

Finally, A Responsible Adult In The Room

– By Ed Kociela –

If you are of a certain age, you can recall the uproar when President Gerald Ford issued a pardon for former President Richard Nixon.

The backlash was tumultuous, so much so that it cost Ford the presidency a scant two years later when he was defeated by Jimmy Carter.

The Watergate scandal had exposed Nixon as the petty crook that he truly was and he bailed before certain conviction in the Senate.

Ford issued the pardon, he said, “to change our national focus. . . to shift our attentions from the pursuit of a fallen president to the pursuit of the urgent need of a rising nation. . . that ”the passions generated would seriously disrupt the healing of our country from the great wounds of the past.”

The argument today, from some quarters, is that perhaps President Joe Biden should do the same for Donald Trump. After all, we are neck-deep in the COVID-19 pandemic with an economy that has tilted the misery index woefully out of kilter as Americans find themselves without their steady stream of income, are lining up in record numbers at food banks and living with the specter of homelessness, and dealing with an overwhelming dose of Trump fatigue that has us all searching for a return to normalcy.

As much as I believe that forgiveness is the first step in moving forward, in this case, it would be a tragic mistake to give the former president a hard slap on the wrist and let him move on, unfettered, to endless rounds of golf at Mar-a-Lago. The Senate must press on to trial and convict. The cause and effect that brought the article of impeachment is that repulsive.

Nixon was brought up on charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress, pretty strong stuff.

Bill Clinton was impeached on grounds of perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice. Again, pretty strong stuff.

But, let’s be honest here. Nixon was a cheap crook who tried to lie his way out of a tawdry break-in of Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and Clinton was a serial philanderer trying to dodge the fury of his woman scorned.

What they did in the process was surely wrong, certainly meeting the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. But, none of that measures up to the charge of inciting an insurrection, which resulted in an attempt to overthrow the very principles of democracy by inciting a mob of rabid sycophants to storm the Capitol in search of Vice President Mike Pence, who they wanted to hang, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who they also intended to kill. Nobody died as a result of what Nixon or Clinton did. The Constitution was never in jeopardy.

Trump’s fomentation was a literal call to arms as he roused a mob to overturn the legal will of voters who, deciding they had had enough, deposited him on the curb on Nov. 3. Trump wasn’t trying to cover up a petty break-in like Nixon, he wasn’t trying to avoid marital discord like Clinton. He was guiding a violent coup to seize autocratic control over a nation built on a foundation of democracy.

Had he succeeded, how long would his reign have endured? Four more years? Eight? To the end of his life? Thank God, we will never know.

Truthfully, I don’t care where Trump lands. The odds are pretty favorable that we’ll never see him wandering the exercise yard of a federal prison in an orange jumpsuit. That just doesn’t happen to rich guys, especially rich guys who were once president. But, we can anticipate a judgment, should the Senate find him guilty, that would bar Trump from holding elected office in the future and, with the baggage attached with two impeachments and countless civil lawsuits that will come into play now that he is Citizen Trump, it is doubtful the Federal Communications Commission would authorize a broadcast license to somebody found guilty of inciting an insurrection. His time would, it seems, be pretty much filled with giving depositions and working on his golf game.

I’m not privy to the whispered conversations along The Beltway these days, so it would be a fool’s game to predict what will happen in the Senate when the impeachment charge lands there. The only thing sure is that there will undoubtedly be more senators willing to find him guilty than there were in his first impeachment trial. Whether there will be enough to convict remains to be seen. But, there is the thought that a conviction could be the impetus to purge Trump from the Republican Party and return the GOP to a sense of normalcy, which would be good for not only the party but the nation. Splitting the party would serve no purpose and all but extinguish the necessary give-and-take between ideologies. I don’t want to see the GOP dissolved, I don’t want to see it splintered. I would rather see it morph back into the traditional conservative values that have inspired debate and meaningful dialog that was once the hallmark of our democracy. You need not cling to conservative ideals to understand that the nation would be best served with thoughtful and sincere opposition from both sides. We really can learn from each other and build consensus because, well, as Biden has said, the government must represent all of the people.

Whether through luck or destiny, we have survived our four years of a Trump administration. We made it through all of the bluff, bluster, and ignorance of a populist buffoon who had no business seating himself behind a desk in the Oval Office. If we have learned anything, I hope it is that we never again elect a person who could not pass a simple civics class.

There is much that must be done to blot the stain on our history that was the Trump administration and it will take time. Biden is not and never will be perfect, but at least we can wake up in the morning safe in the knowledge that we have a responsible adult in the room.

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