The Hearings Reveal the Means to Pry Away Trump’s Support: It’s about Patriotism vs. the Betrayal of the Nation
Ukraine is on the front-line of a battle central to American national security—the battle to contain the aggressive Russian effort to reconstitute the empire of the Soviet Union (which America labored for so many dangerous decades to defeat) and to protect the values of democracy.
Everything about Donald Trump’s conduct in Ukraine-gate has the effect of weakening that long-term, bi-partisan American effort to prevent the growth in power of America’s greatest adversary in the world today.
A President who – for his own personal benefit – acts so as to weaken the U.S. position in the world has betrayed the nation in a way that should outrage every American patriot.
As the task in the impeachment hearings is to move Americans toward supporting Trump’s impeachment and removal, and as patriotism is a highly motivating passion among many who now support Trump, a wise strategy for the impeachment process is to highlight Trump’s anti-patriotic betrayal of the nation.
***************************
On the first day of the public impeachment hearings, famed prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said on MSNBC that in presenting Ukraine-gate the Democrats should emphasize how Trump was attacking the integrity of our election process, “cheating” to win the upcoming presidential election.
Americans, he suggested, are not likely to be moved about how Trump’s conduct threatened Ukrainian security.
I think he’s mistaken. Not that the threat to Ukrainian security in itself will move Americans. But rather the hearings show that Trump betrayed American national security. And that, I propose, provides the tool to pry supporters away from Trump. For it offends the very core of patriotism.
Consider what we know about what the people who are now on Trump’s side of the issue care about.
It’s true that Trump’s conduct constituted an effort to corrupt the 2020 election (by illegally enlisting the aid of a foreign country). And true also that his assault on our democratic institutions is important. But that issue seems unlikely to pry away Trump’s supporters by offending their moral commitments—for recent history has demonstrated that the rank-and-file Republicans of this era are not bothered by their leaders cheating to get power.
(They’ve accepted it with McConnell’s theft of a Supreme Court seat (and majority), and they’ve accepted it as Republicans in several of the states (NC, WI, MI) have tried to strip power from offices that they lose.)
But Trump’s Ukraine conduct offends the kind of patriotism that a lot of Trump supporters -- who fly the Stars and Stripes on their houses and in their yards -- do care about.
There is a Patriotism that is simply a love of the nation for what it is in itself. (Like “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.”)
But the core of patriotism -- for most Americans across the political spectrum, but especially for the flag-wavers on the right -- is about being on the side of “Us” in a dangerous world where there are “Thems” that might threaten all we hold dear.
(See NOTE, below, on why in this respect Trump’s conduct is a more basic offense against the nation than Nixon’s.)
That’s why our patriotic holidays have such a pronounced military flavor. In the battle between Us and Them, the Patriot is solidly behind Us.
Trump’s Ukraine conduct betrays the nation in precisely those terms: weakening us and making us more vulnerable to our enemies. Any flag-flying patriot who sees that Trump — for his own personal benefit -- was entirely willing to sacrifice American power while advancing the power of America’s major adversary (Putin’s Russia) will be outraged.
The hearings have already begun to show clearly this fundamental, anti-patriotic betrayal by the American commander-in-chief.
So if those people who fly the flag year round can be led to see how Trump has betrayed the nation at this most fundamental level, perhaps they can get shaken loose, and turn their allegiance to Trump into angry feeling of betrayal.
***************
I will attempt in a separate piece to delineate what the hearings have shown about just how Trump’s Ukraine conduct reveals a stunning indifference to American interests and values, how it shows a betrayal of the nation as ugly as it comes.
***************
NOTE: Nixon committed a variety of impeachable offenses, most of which apply also to Trump also (obstruction of justice, abuse of power, contempt of Congress). But Nixon, unlike Trump, took seriously his responsibility to advance U.S. national interests, as he understood them. (And when it came to countering America’s Soviet competitor, it was Nixon who made the move to connect with Mao’s China, beginning a relationship that countered Soviet ambitions.) Trump, by contrast, seems indifferent to U.S. national interests. Indeed, he seems more reliably to advance the interests of Putin’s Russia even at the expense of the United States.