I find that I’m disappointed to read about the choice of the House managers. But only tentatively. Even though I’m a close observer of these things, I realize I don’t know nearly enough about all the factors involved to pass judgment about how well this team that Pelosi has put together is suited to meeting all the requirements of an effective prosecution of Donald Trump.
But I do hope that the only criterion has been: How do we make the most powerful case to persuade the American people by our conduct of the trial?
That’s the job now. It’s not about getting a conviction, which is well nigh inconceivable. It is about exposing Trump and the Trump Party — a criminal and his accomplices — with maximal effectiveness. Showing Trump’s criminality and corruption and betrayals, and showing the nature of a Republican Party that has made itself his servant and is going to acquit this most lawless President.
Maybe all these people are chosen to achieve that purpose. I hope so.
I am much reassured that the lead man is Adam Schiff, for Schiff showed himself during the House Intelligence Committee hearings to be an outstanding prosecutor wielding legal clarity and moral passion. Impressive. Formidable. Downright noble.
I’m not sure about the rest, although I have seen Val Demming from Georgia demonstrating that she is a very sharp prosecutor. She wields weapons.
I like Jerry Nadler, but as a public spokesman he’s something of a dud. He’s just got nothing of the orator in him, and this is a time when some powerful oration will be called for. We need speeches of a kind that move people, and Jerry Nadler is not one to move people.
But who I really wanted to see from the Judiciary Committee was Jamie Raskin. Raskin has already demonstrated he has what it takes — having shown great power, during the Judiciary Committee hearings, in prosecuting of Trump’s defenders on the committee — which prompted me, a month ago, to call for the Democrats to put him in a position to speak to the nation. He’s got the right kind of rhetorical power, with a moral passion in it, to an extent rare among Democrats.
But he’s not among the managers.
Let’s hope there are some such gifts among the team that Pelosi has now named. I’m hoping, but find I cannot assume it.
Pelosi is smart and strategic. So whatever she did, was for reasons. The only question is whether her reasons are the right ones—i.e. whether she conceives the nature of the battle well enough to understand how it needs to be fought.
Ultimately, this battle is the culmination of a generation-long war between the parties, which until now has been waged only by the Republicans, as their Party has been taken over by a dark and broken spirit that didn’t used to own the party.
On one side of the battle over impeachment is a force of brokenness— which has taken over the Republican Party and given us Trump, the Trump Party, and the Trump base, which has been damaging this nation in countless ways for years.
And on the other side of the impeachment battle is a force of wholeness – the rule of law (legal authorities), the fulfillment of the oath (office-holders), truth-telling (journalists) -- that has rallied to defend against this Republican force all that’s best about America.
This impeachment, in other words, is a battle between good and evil.
That is the heart of this battle, and it should be fought as such. It is in those terms that it can best be won:
It is only to the extent that people are able to experience this Republican force viscerally as corrupt, criminal, appalling, as ugly, as broken, as destructive – as evil – that there will arise a popular passion behind the rejection of Trump, toward removal, and toward the disempowerment of a morally bankrupt Republican Party.
The Democrats’ job is to make the evil – the corruption, the ugliness – visible and palpable.
That darkness can be shown through the presentation of the Articles of impeachment. It hardly gets darker than Trump and the Trump Party— and its all on display.
The Democrats need a voice that will be able to lead people to see that darkness, and feel its awfulness. Nothing so dark in the history of American political parties— and the Democrats need a voice that can convey the unprecedented nature of this episode of the Darkening of the Republican Party.
So I look at this team and wonder: will this team give us that voice?
Or is it possible that the Democrats still haven’t figured out the nature of this battle? Haven’t got a clear notion of the battlefield on which the battle is being fought? And that the basic task is to move the American people to repudiate this force? To turn back the morally bankrupt political force that has taken over conservative America in our times?
The people must be persuaded to take power away from the force that has given us such unthinkable things as a President like Trump and a major American political party that, in this impeachment, is prepared to defend the indefensible and violate their oath purely for the sake of power. Moral bankruptcy on full display.
And a base that will support Trump’s presidency and demand that their leaders do his bidding even in the face of the most serious impeachable offenses: cheating in an election, compromising national security for his own benefit, and refusing to respect Congress’s clear constitutional authority to summon witnesses and obtain documents in its impeachment investigation.
Steps toward tyranny.
Get the people to see the evil and arouse the passion to reject it!