Impeachment isn’t just about Ukraine

BloombergOpinion Early Returns

Jonathan Bernstein

Impeachment, political scientists will tell you, is a political act and not a legal one. Here's Julia Azari back in May: Even if the worst accusations made by Trump's critics all turn out to be true, the process by which opponents attempt to remove him from office will be highly political. There is no nonpartisan, apolitical mechanism to evaluate abuses of power and remove a president from office. Our Constitution places this responsibility with the people's elected representatives (and senators, to be precise). The justification for such a choice is strong. What does that mean in practice? When members of Congress weigh whether to impeach and remove President Donald Trump, they'll do so within a much larger political context. Sure, they'll consider the evidence they're presented, any relevant laws and what the Constitution says. But they'll also consider quite a bit more — and quite properly. Senate Republicans, for instance, will think about how their vote will affect future elections. That means assessing whether Trump would be a drag on the Republican ticket in 2020, and whether the alternative (presumably a President Mike Pence on the ballot) would be any better. They'll also ponder their own political futures, which creates a collective action problem: As long as all Republicans act together, it's likely that rank-and-file voters would accept whatever they do. But if only a handful vote to remove the president, they'll risk drawing a serious primary challenge.  Two episodes on Tuesday show why this larger political context represents a threat to Trump's presidency. The first was easy to see coming: According to testimony from a first-hand witness, the published White House summary of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — in which Trump pressed his counterpart to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden — was incomplete and excluded damaging evidence. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a staffer at the National Security Council, testified that when he attempted to correct the summary, his efforts were rejected. This comes weeks after Trump claimed that the summary was "an exact word-for-word transcript of the conversation." What's so bad about this isn't the new evidence of malfeasance. It's the message it sends to Trump's would-be allies: that his explanations may not only be untrue, but easily exposed as untrue. Trump might not care if he has a reputation for dishonesty, but almost all politicians do care very much about building trust among their colleagues and constituents. Remember: The "smoking gun" tape that finally ended Richard Nixon's presidency wasn't the first conclusive proof against him. The reason it brought him down was that it finally convinced congressional Republicans that he'd keep lying to them and expecting them to lie for him — and that they'd keep getting exposed. They were right about this, by the way: It turned out that there were plenty of bombshells that didn't go public until years later but that a full impeachment trial would've brought to light in 1974.  The second episode seemingly had nothing to do with impeachment. The White House is mulling a scheme to evade the normal rules for appointing cabinet secretaries to install an acting Homeland Security secretary whom the Senate would otherwise almost certainly block. This is a mistake on multiple levels. It's hard to exaggerate how foolish it would be to antagonize Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell right now, for one thing. Other Republicans will see that the president doesn't really understand his alliance with them, and can't be trusted down the line. And even if Trump ends up choosing someone that senators could accept, it's still a poke in the eye: He's taking away an important power that gives them considerable influence over the executive branch. Rubbing their noses in it when he needs their help to save his presidency doesn't seem like a great idea. Although this effort may not appear in a formal impeachment article, it is a part of the full political context that will weigh on members of Congress in the weeks ahead. Their eventual votes will be based on some combination of the evidence at hand and this larger context. And Azari is correct: That's exactly how it should be.  1. New update from Seth Masket on Democratic activists in the early primary and caucus states.  2. James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders at the Monkey Cage on Trump, Ukraine and why what he's done is different and troubling. 3. Jennifer Victor on the "lock him up" chant at the World Series game.  4. Gregory Koger and Jeffrey Lazarus at Mischiefs of Faction on gender and scandal.  5. Also at Mischiefs: Amy Erica Smith on the protests in Chile. 6. And Dan Drezner on "the age of cringe foreign policy." Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

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