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Concerning the Recent Impeachment of President Trump: Part Two (Ep. 2)
It was shown in the first episode of Oh Say Nation that the greatest fear of Alexander Hamilton regarding the question of the longevity of the Constitution, its very durability across great time, was expressed in Federalist No. 65. In review, Hamilton knew that in the power of impeachment of the president of the United States would lie a certain danger to the longevity of the Constitution — that of a partisan impeachment. The Framers had chosen the Senate for the trial phase of any impeachment due to its numerary powers, meaning that it possessed an adequate number of representatives to call in a likely more fair assessment of sensibilities in the case before them not so much necessarily in regard to party line. In a case, on the other hand, if the power of partisan sentiments might one day nullify the numerary powers of the Senate, or, for that matter, of the House of Representatives, meaning work against the innate usefulness of the number of members of either house, Hamilton states:
“. . . and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
Yet, as was demonstrated also, the very subjects of the jurisdiction in any consideration of impeachments will necessarily also themselves be political, or as Hamilton puts it:
” They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
It seems that the structure of the Constitution in the separation of powers must rely on withstanding the forces of political sentiments that test its very utility unto a function that can at once be preserving of itself while still answering adequately and adeptly the concerns of political weight in matters that may overwhelm the elected officials as they govern. The question then naturally arises that if a partisan vote in the House of Representatives to impeach a president — in this historical case President Trump — is to be contemplated in the abstract briefly, what is the outstanding nature of this event? Yes, our most venerated Framer, Hamilton, stated clearly that a partisan impeachment by its own nature stands alone as the most dangerous tool of destruction of the power invested in the executive branch since it could lead to an innocent president being impeached along sheer party lines; such a result is a danger to the sanctity of the office of the president thenceforth due to its having set a legal precedent. The idea of an innocent president being ousted wrongly by the Congress through impeachment could diminish the very place of the sovereignty of the people in our democracy. First, this partisan vote by the House to impeach Trump could by the sheer weight of its own precedent legally set up a party-run parliamentary system of government that would have the power on a regular basis to override the vote of the people.
The Founders chose the people themselves to elect the president of this country, and this vote is distinctive since it unifies the people. Furthermore, it unifies the people on a vital choice since the president holds a unitary power due to the need for there to be a leader whose decision-making ability must be answerable at times instantaneously in cases of widespread disaster or military necessity, for instance. To involve the entirety of the nation’s people in selecting their own president keeps the spirit of democracy intact and thriving even as their vote is secondarily sent through the kind of prism of the Electoral College. Moreover, the vote for president connects the chosen candidate to the people. There is no other vote that carries the same singular moment to call forth all of the nation’s people together in a voting pool. This is the apex of active democracy at work — when the people decide on the only one official of all the three branches who alone and unitarily holds the total power of his or her branch of federal government. The president becomes their personal leader and mentor. That closeness in identity formation between the chief executive officer of this land and the people of this land who vote for that officer of the presidency is a supremely active and deeply reaching bond of democratically born worth.
Can you imagine a presidential campaign where the voters of the nation are stricken with dire apathy? Imagine for an instant such a campaign where the voter turnout would be limping along at some barren, some meager, sum total? If the people ever feel so abandoned that their vote for a president can just be undone by a secondary vote of Congress, that sense of abandonment could become the start of a driving desire to see America restored to its full glory of strident, democratic worth, power and also presence on the world stage.
Speaking of democratic worth, what would such a president who stands to be summarily removed from office by the opposing party in Congress be like? Such a president in a parliamentary democracy would bear only some distant semblance of familiar bearing to us people, working only at the behest of a large body of congressional regulators who could themselves be divided and split asunder by partisan griefs and discontentment. Expediency of action in the case of a national emergency would easily be out of reach. In-fighting for executive level decisional power among the congressional leaders would foment deep rivalry and possible anarchy compared to how our government now functions in normal times at least — in normal times where the Congress is concertedly doing its job to legislate instead of trying out some visionary-based coup to impeach by any means at all the sitting, duly elected president.
If the legislative branch fully commandeers the voting power of the people to elect their own president through an overriding vote of non-confidence that would topple him or her, then the power of the people to vote would be lost in such a way that it would be beyond the imagination compared to what we as American citizens now know. The voting citizens in our democracy by all constitutional rights must retain their duly elected president past an overgrown parliamentary wrongdoing in the instance of a vote of non-confidence in the one who had indeed been elected president by the nation’s voters. Thus, when there is an impeachment ever that is partisan in nature, our system of governing itself has been placed in a status of questionability. Yes, there has just been such a partisan impeachment. Yet, the structure of the three branches — the executive, legislative and judicial — must rely upon a balance so as to maintain a holistic harmony in order to keep alive and vital the very writ of our Constitution — as it was written, so must it in the force of its actions govern dynamically. The Constitution must thus embrace the nation and the wider people as they furthermore certainly should know that the Constitution is rightfully in the force of propriety, in the mixture of forces that bring about an intact balance and therefore effectiveness. Now if too much power overtakes one branch as in this case of the partisan impeachment of President Trump, then this imbalance of power further threatens the very viability of the very venerate Constitution itself.
We further saw in the first episode of Oh Say Nation that our democracy is built upon the place of the individual to have been born into the Providence of their Creator first and not to have been born into a category of pre-determined destiny as dictated by a certain few who govern or by a certain monarch who governs. In this same light of natural born rights for all lies the deepest embrace of any citizen to the elected representatives who govern, and that is the power, the right to vote; most especially is the president the prize vote for any voting citizen. Voting by the people constitutes approval of and selection of their officials of government by those people. Voting is essentially a deeply enacted sanction granted by the people for their leaders. To take away the power of the people to directly vote in their president by handing over a more ultimate approval to the legislative branch for yet another vote, a vote of confidence, is highly un-American, it is highly unconstitutional. Our legal system must somehow upend this grave outcome of how a partisan House ever had impeached our innocent president, President Trump. Trump was not charged with any impeachable crime. Therefore, this partisan vote goes around our president’s essential innocence by misnaming things so as to call out crimes that are not truly crimes nor cited as impeachable crimes in the very Constitution itself. This entire array of illegality on the part of the conduct of the House of Representatives, who even held a kangaroo court to foment the impeachment, would dangerously allow such overriding votes by the legislative branch in the future so that the Congress would then indeed hold power of inestimable proportion over the president and over the voting populace who should elect their president inviolably. What has been described herein is not the way the Constitution designs our representative form of government.
Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense. Paine’s book Common Sense was America’s handbook in its time for guiding the thinking of the settlers on the North American continent in the days when the calling to break away from Great Britain and form a new nation was in the air everywhere. In this seminal book, Common Sense, Paine wrote:
“For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King.”
Indeed, it is according to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that laws are spirited into the lives of the people in order to keep social order, in order to counter for the lack of virtue that might express itself in the human being.
Forsooth, hypostatic to, meaning in and through, our democratic philosophy the individual conceptually is sacred. The individual is conceived of as entering the world with natural rights and equality that are granted by birth itself through the Creator; and from those rights since they are inalienable the individual lifelong enjoys a protection from tyranny. Thus always there will be a cocoon from within which any individual may envision freedom as a given and equality as a given.
So further, it is the job of our elected legislators in Washington to carve the laws and undertake their political work with a like vision for the hallowed nature of each individual as free and equal. There may be an instance among any constituency of a given leader across a demographic fault of a sort that seems to defy the elevated stature of the citizens as according to the soundness of principles that match equality and freedom for those citizens. In such an unfortunate instance, then once again there must be instituted through reductionism to the primordial rights of the individual an effort on the part of the governing officials to inspire within themselves purity of thought and compassion in action on the behalf of those individuals. The task work of the leaders where inequality becomes an outstanding case for some group of people is to regroup back to freedom and equality for all; yes, the leaders also must refresh their thinking and find a way to resolve and to settle the grievances at hand with laws that answer to the greatest common good of the people. Sometimes this requires rather enforcing the existing laws more diligently as well.
Now what if that individual is the actual president of the United States? Not only is President Trump the Chief Executive Officer of the land, he is also at the root value an individual.
Now if President Trump had been surrounded by many partisan leaders who occupy their own stomping grounds in the nation’s capital, regarding themselves to be pre-determined not only in their own stature as guaranteed of the same freedom and equality in this democracy as all others, of course; but also, what if they further fancy themselves to be buttressed by a certain status they enjoy as pre-determined but due to past associations? Let us say those past associations might be by family predecessors who had held elected office. Or, on the other hand, let us say those past associations had been through family members who had enjoyed influential positions near those who had been elected by the people to hold office. Then by these powers of association so described heretofore, would the resolve of these leaders be such as to remain fair-minded and also democratically philosophically remanded to honor the voting power of the nation of people together who had elected a president? Would such as their resolve be made manifest in their actions, words and political sentiments, these people located by birth more closely associated to some nucleus of power in Washington, D.C.? More succinctly, would these partisan leaders who are part of an insider tradition by now in our nation’s capital also be honorifically dispatched at the root value for our democracy? Would they work faithfully in the public trust so as to protect our governing system essentially and its very Constitution eventually by bowing to an elected president even though he was an outsider to their circles of influence and history of transactions accordingly?
Herein lies the crux of the impeachment, or so it must be. The Constitution is supposed to function across the political inputs of its three branches in a balanced way by a system of checks and balances. Then this supposition of balance in action of our Constitution would at least partially be brought to a perfection of ideal behavior if and when, one would further suppose, the actors, the elected officials primarily, were adhering to a fundamental respect for the place and power of the government yet to be moderated by its true nature as representative of the people. For that place and power of the government is only to be borrowed in a sense at a distance from those from whom they must borrow their power and their say: the people. The free, the people who are regarded for their equality and who sense their own freedom and equality, who accordingly do indeed vote, carry the primordial say in this democratic America. This democratic tenet of truth of the foundational say of the people themselves should always be brought to mind as the nation’s leaders lead even through politicking according to their private convictions of mind, their conscientious characters — the people though rarest are the ultimate rulers, and they have the ultimate say. The people remain as rulers in a democracy. Oh, say nation! Rise ever above challenges to your dominion as free and equal. Regard your duty as citizens as your most precious gem to be shined and honed and sought after as you go to the polls to vote in your next president! Answer the call!
Oddly, there is a statement made in Common Sense by Thomas Paine that comes to mind:
“It is not in numbers, but in unity that our great strength lies.”
Paine states this in reference to the question of when and with what could independence of the Colonies from the mother country of England be accomplished. This independence would lead to a constitution all our own on this continent as he says in his discourse, and this independence also of course would be regarded by all as freedom.
Numbers in their preponderance or lack of it relate commensurately with the operational principles found in a democratic form of government — think of voting whereby the rule is that of the majority. Furthermore, we as rational beings tend to favor unity as the presage of harmony and good accord, and as the friend of successfully determining through the governing system the greatest common good of the people. Majority in voting itself derives essentially from the whole, so even if all are not united, the basis of an outcome on voting arises from the very sense of the perfection of unity first.
You may also in your discretion find that this call to unity concerning a discrete matter in pre-revolutionary thinking among the first American citizens abstractly inverts itself in one instance as regards the partisan impeachment of President Donald Trump, and then this same call to unity re-rights itself in another consideration. Even so, this other consideration lies not so far apart from the deleterious pains of the polarity of dire hatred being applied to political persuasions by certain radical Democrats in Congress — if it is not in actuality the greed for power more than it may be a true matter of heart or lack of heart; and moreover, if it is not in actuality the protection of the power held only by an insider ruling set of people found in Washington, then what is it?
Consider instead something that may become an alternative to the building only of a far-left polar position in our nation’s governing forums. Such a building of the radical left movement in Washington rides as if nobly on a call to unity while it at the same time could strike ever at our Constitution’s separation of branches then again propounded by that ill-famed unity? Is that unity not born of hatred and destructive intent? For if unity in the partisan sense sets out to destroy an elected official who sits in the executive seat of our nation effects what has been called an impeachment, that is one matter that has been deemed dangerous indeed as we have seen. Now if one inspires our nation’s leaders to unify in sheer principle with their fellow leaders across the political aisle, then Paine’s statement would ring true to the tendency in all men’s hearts and in all women’s hearts to serve yet in the name and spirit of freedom and equality in a beautifully appointed way, in a way of unity in thought and in deed blessed by righteousness. Through that inspiration could the leaders now in contradistinction to brutish and brattish behavior and bold words of the yesterdays be mindful of the power of unity to mend differences and flatten prejudices. Now our leaders could sit in meetings with self-presence instead of pursuing an arrogant boycotting of meetings based upon some belligerent partisan divide. These leaders might remind themselves of the importance of their demeanor and how it may be wise to squelch their own passions and emotions while doing task work under the weight of issues and issue formations that would be served so well through good conscience and the fairness of thinking that is so possible to be enjoyed in a democracy such as ours. Always believing in the way and the wisdom of our democratic processes, could our leaders make right any challenge at all — even one that crosses idealistic lines of thinking. Remember, too, that those leaders are elected by the people who also believe in the way of democracy as destined to succeed as it certainly must. For how can any ideal be greater than that summary goal for a legislator in Washington to successfully determine the greatest common good of the people? Let us all alike revel in the freedom to think and the freedom to express accordingly. Imagine a group of leaders in Washington who would be so profoundly moved to have been elected to serve the people, and who would find through the diligence of their dutiful work the profoundly appointed democratic philosopher that lives in all of us people in this great America and not only in those elected by us to lead! Is this the call of President Trump to ‘clean the swamp’ after all? Is this not an echoing of his campaign before he was duly elected to the presidency of the United States of America? This is something for which to live.
At this juncture it would be appropriate to say simply: woe unto me, and woe unto us, for ‘we the people’ have been put aside as we have watched this partisan game of name-calling and quixotic accusational strategies map out such a course in our governing process that we would ever land at such a partisan impeachment of a duly elected president. We have seen that true conscience in our leaders towards a democratically disposed soundness of mind could have obviated such a partisan impart of impeachment. Since that partisan nature of the impeachment is deemed to be dangerous to our longevity as a democracy in a diffuse sense, we must also look further in order to understand what is before us as a nation. Indeed, is it that there must have been a blockage in the sentiments of the leaders? Would our leaders rightfully have been reflective of their true love for democracy, perhaps, if they had not been blinded in a sense unto it? In fact, how could they with such robust statements and tangential thoughts and acerbic words regarding President Trump, our duly elected leader, de-elect him with the bounden mind to impeach him even before he had done anything impeachable? This sordid methodology of just liberally declaring an impeachment for crimes before the crimes were committed goes directly against the rule of law in our land, and this is truly the most outrageous offense of all — sum total — for without it, there would not have even been a partisan impeachment.
Consider that this partisan impeachment was exactly built on the same rarefied unity we would have in other circumstances yet enjoyed for its sheer power in decision making and in issue formation in normal governing or voting. In our great country it is not that a person of any stature should be stalked as guilty by the legal system that would then set out to thus declare guilt before searching for a crime to match that declaration of guilt in a person! This approach to law enforcement turns upside down the concept of innocent until proven guilty. That kind of illegal exertion of the law contradicts profoundly the rule of law for all equally whether the citizen in question is larger than life in the holding of the highest office of the land or simpler than the one who only cites the Pledge of Allegiance once a year at a sports tournament. This impeachment stalking that was conducted against President Trump by unruly Democrats is not only un-constitutional, but also it is tyrannical! It is highly tyrannical!
Moreover, those few of our leaders, who sponsored this macabre treatment of a populist president, should simply hang their heads in shame. Why? Because it is President Donald Trump who is loved. Because it is President Donald Trump who is loved by so many people that an entire political movement is centered on him as the one president who is rescuing America, making America great again. Because it is President Donald Trump who goes out to greet the people at massive, lively rallies in conversationally toned speeches about his faithful work to serve them as their promise-keeping president. Thus, those few of our leaders who have spoken so ill of their president ought to be ashamed of their disregard for our rule of law in seeking to impeach our president before he had deserved such by any action or deed. Furthermore, they play the unreal, the intangible world of thoughts, in their illicit show of disregard for the legal rights of our president as if they could somehow corner him by accusing him of a certain mindset. They try to call him dangerous to democracy and to fair governing as if he is dictatorial; in fact, a crime is not a thought, a crime is a misdeed. It is based on behavior that is open to perception. Our president has not done anything that could rise to the category of high crimes and misdemeanors, nor to the category of treason, nor to the category of bribery; most astoundingly, his legal team in the Senate trial has neatly and with great dignity shown the innocence of President Trump, nullifying the articles of impeachment as non-definitional, as definitionally incorrect. Their great words and knowledge of Constitutional law resoundingly led to the acquittal of President Trump of impeachment. This means something. It means our future, our destiny. Those four cases of violation of the public trust just named, high crimes and misdemeanors, treason or bribery, would deem by the words of the Constitution itself a president to be impeachable. Notwithstanding, it can be stated as it has just been stated that President Trump did not commit any crime that would constitute an impeachable offense as his lawyers so capably had argued in the Senate trial of their client. Nevertheless, no matter who states it, or so it seems, how can the overall situation that was engendered by the impeachment by the House of Representatives of Trump be legally substantiated now that such an impeachment vote had ever been cast? What exactly are we to do? We the people are here to re-elect that selfsame president. That is what we are to do.
Let the analysis herein turn to what actually is behind this impending ailment of our hallowed Constitution since it has been assaulted by a partisan impeachment. Our hallowed Constitution is ailing to the extent that its actual provisions have been overthrown somehow by some organized few who have committed such a contrary and challenging error in judgment that proper discernment of mind could have prevented. We now feel we are at a distance from some of our Democratic Party leaders in Washington. There are those among them who have indeed violated their very answerability to the wider people of America through their transparent misdeeds just described here at the surface level anyway. However, we must be the wiser of them. The distance we feel from them spans a great chasm. Firstly, we would all like trusting believers in democracy and the rule of law want to close in on the wide span of that political chasm between us and the leaders who have failed us; we would like certainly to close forever the vacancy of a chasm whose vacuity causes us to assess with great doubt the status of our nation’s temperament and of our nation’s character. We live now in the wake of this political debacle of impeaching President Trump even if he was then acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial.
There must be an answer to this political debacle that has caused a unified voice of aberrant political sentiment to scorch the very concept of unity among our leaders. Such misbegotten unity resulted in the occurrence of a partisan impeachment of an American president, an innocent one. This occurrence has legal implications that are demonstrably poor towards a good prognostication of the health of our democracy on into the future for our posterity. Indeed, this lies in the fact that those leaders who had committed the act of impeachment stalking are exactly united around and about corruption. They are corrupted. When corruption takes rulership is when unity in that corrupted interest will fail us. Otherwise, unity that is born of the wholesome will work as an upsurge for its power to spawn correlative success in meeting the greatest common good of the people in our democratic forums of governing. However, when agreement unto a unified initiative and the opining that founds and implements that initiative goes wrong — when the agreement is upon a cause whose essential nature is corrupted and wrong, whose essential nature is rebellious and vile — then there is great trouble abroad that grossly interferes with good democratic governing. In fact, that scorched unity of the far-left Democratic wing of the House finds its very source in dark designs on the exact form of government we have by virtue of our Constitution. It would seem, indeed, it has been widely spoken in presidential campaigning of late that there are those who currently enjoy power as elected to serve our democracy who want to deflect that elected power over to a socialist camp, to change our democracy into a socialist state instead! This is what threatens us this day. The first step to re-right the ship of state so as to preserve this democracy is to vote in the upcoming election. It is to re-elect Donald Trump to the presidency and thus nullify further the impeachment event we have watched unfold on the nation’s stage. I call you people to action this coming November 3, 2020. In effect, you the people can use your perfect vision, your 20/20 political vision, and get out and vote for Donald Trump.
Think also of how we the people can move and deeply inspire the great leaders of the Republican Party upon whose shoulders rest now the momentous problems and tasks in resolving those questions that arise out of this unusual and historic event of a corrupt few who had begun the movement to impeach our president out-of-hand so rudely and brashly with no compunction about it! We can demonstrate our own political presence on the same national stage and work with our good and brilliant leaders in Washington to preserve our heritage, indeed, our Constitution. We have the power to vote. Let us perform together a veritable miracle. Let us lift up our voices as by consent of the governed and vote for the one who has daily born this burden of injustice that has transgressed his own rights as an individual, for he is the chosen one whom the people had chosen to be elected to office. We will as the United States of America succeed and continue to prosper if you exercise your power to vote on November 3rd, and simply vote for Trump. Let us celebrate our birth as a nation on this upcoming presidential election day, November 3, and win by voting! Let us see a re-birth even in the face of the crazed liberals who want to devolve our system of governing unto a socialistic state and appropriate somehow the wealth of the American people unto their own coffers for their own authority over how the people will be permitted by them to live. This is not freedom. I hereby call you the people to fight for your continued freedom, and vote Trump.
Marilynn Stark February 27 through 29, 2020