They Did the Right Thing

Donald Trump is now only the third US president in 230 years to have been impeached, the first to suffer that humiliation in his first term, and the first to have it happen while he is running for re-election. And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

Trump may well go on to win a second term, which will be a sorry comment on the state of the American republic and the gullibility of the American electorate. If that happens, history will not look back kindly on our era, or on us. (We already look not so great having let him into the White House once.) Conversely, this episode may prove to be a mile marker on his well-deserved demise.

But to that point, I have been deeply dismayed at how much of the analysis of his impeachment has been focused on sheer gamesmanship, and whether Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have played this well or badly, and what the impact will be on their collective political fortunes.

Really? How small. How shortsighted. How depressing.

The Democratic majority in the US House of Representatives just took on the somber and sorrowful duty of impeaching a US president for high crimes and misdemeanors, the evidence of which was so overwhelming that it wasn’t even a close call for anyone willing to look at that evidence objectively. (I realize that lets out the entire Republican Party,) The GOP has not…