It has been stirring to hear the sworn-to-secrecy Democratic congress-people talking about the sterling, patriotic, morally upright nature of some of the witnesses who have been testifying behind closed doors.
Former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, William Taylor (the “it’s crazy” guy who is currently the top American diplomat in Ukraine, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman seem to have been the principal American paragons, standing out for integrity and the good of the nation at a time when the President was willingly sacrificing American national security to advance his own personal power.
Now, the public hearing phase of the impeachment process is approaching. And these people must know that they will soon be called to perform — in front of a national audience — with the task of conveying to the American public what “we the people” most need to see and to understand about the presidential conduct they have witnessed.
In the discussions of these upcoming public hearings, a certain amount of attention has been paid to the Interrogators whose questions will be eliciting the public testimony. Much has been made especially of the fact that a major part of the questioning will be done by professional staff, expert in conducting such interrogative processes (people like the counsel who finally got somewhere with Lewandowsky after the various congresspeople had accomplished so little with their five-minute gigs as interrogators).
The use expert interrogators, over a longer stretch of time, is doubtless important — especially with hostile witnesses who are not interested in helping the process. But the challenge is different with the patriots (like those mentioned above) whom we can presume to want their testimony to serve the nation’s need at this dangerous moment in our national life.
Those patriotic witnesses don’t need to be cornered by clever questioning, but need only a decent sequence of questions to help midwife out of them a presentation that will be effective in showing the American people what they need to hear.
But it is the witnesses, not the midwives, who must deliver the “baby.”
So I hope — and I expect — that Yovanovitch, Taylor, and Vindman are preparing for the roles they are about to play. These will be, I feel confident in saying, the most important performances of their lives.
