Into the ever expanding surplus of Trump-era books, journalists Rachel Bade and Karoun Demirjian have published Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump (Harper Collins, 2022). As its title suggests, this book is less about Trump than about his two impeachments – and less about Trump and the two impeachments than about Congress (and particularly congressional leadership) and how the two Trump impeachments were handled. And, as the word « Botched » in the title hints, the authors are also somewhat critical of the way congressional leaders handled the two impeachments.
The sense one gets is that the Democratic leadership (Speaker Pelosi in particular) were too cautious in their embrace of impeachment. Some of this, of course, was due to the usual sorts of factors – ambitious politicians’ personality and territorial conflicts. But there were also deeper philosophical concerns about how to approach impeachment (if at all), the fundamental division between the Democrats’ ideologically progressive left flank and more mainstream Democrats, and practical political concerns about how impeachment would play with the public and its possibly negative effects on the Democratic majority (dependent as it was on members from non-safe districts).
Since my own view on the subject was then and remains now that the first impeachment was probably a mistake, I am more sympathetic to Speaker Pelosi’s position. Like Speaker Pelosi resisting the ideologically progressive left flank for much of 2019, I too think the historical lesson is that for impeachment to work the case must be clear and convincing and the process bipartisan. The 1868 Johnson impeachment (which gave the process a bad name for over a century) and the 1998 Clinton impeachment were politically motivated, partisan attacks (deserved perhaps in Johnson’s case, a scandalous overreach in Clinton’s case). The Republican impeachment of Clinton backfired dramatically. Clinton’s popularity soared, and the Republicans paid a political price. Pelosi remembered this and resisted her ideologically progressive left flank accordingly – until Ukraine.
I believe she was right – and, if anything, was probably wrong to give in to her ideologically progressive left flank. The transformation impeachment into a partisan political weapon has, unsurprisingly, made impeachment a largely unworkable dead-letter. (One consequence is the dilemma we now have about indicting presidents, which we might not have if impeachment – the proper constitutional remedy for abuses of p[residential power – were still viable.)
Prescinding from the more fundamental philosophical issues about impeachment, Pelosi’s political instinct was correct that it would only work when the case is clear and convincing AND the support for it is bipartisan. This was what had happened in 1974. Had Nixon been formally impeached, he would likely have been convicted – by a bipartisan vote. But there was never any chance of that in 2019. As I said at the time, just as a good prosecutor should consider whether he or she can win a conviction from a jury, the House should first consider whether there is a realistic chance that the Senate will convict by a 2/3 vote.
Then there was the fundamental problem of political priorities. As the new Republican-led House prepares to focus on investigations and impeachments in 2023, many have asked whether that was really what Republican voters, preoccupied with inflation, etc., actually voted for a Republican Congress to do. That, the authors illustrate, was also very much Nancy Pelosi’s concern, when she assumed the speakership in 2019. She definitely wanted to focus on a Democratic agenda which would resonate with voters and – unlike her ideologically progressive left flank – did not believe impeachment could or should be that agenda. Whatever the authors’ views on what Pelosi’s priorities should have been, their account confirms that she was right to want to focus on a voter-centric agenda rather than on an investigations and impeachment agenda, which would mainly appeal to her ideologically progressive left flank while leaving mainstream voters unimpressed and disengaged.
Thus, returning from the 2019 Madrid Climate Conference, Pelosi « was almost doleful as she implored her leadership team for help messaging the party through the last throes of their campaign to oust Trump. Impeachment headlines will dominate the next few weeks, she warned them at the beginning of December, but we need to focus on our legislative achievements. » Meanwhile, « Republicans were accusing her of being on a crusade to oust the president because she was blinded by her hatred of him. The exact opposite was true. Impeachment was an albatross around Pelosi’s neck and always had been. She had never wanted to be in this position. »
After Trump’s impeachment by the House, the action shifted to the Senate. The authors’ account of the machinations surrounding the Senate’s trial makes for a fascinating read, one of the best sections of the book. Then, in one chapter, the authors take us through the eventful 11 months that followed (February 6, 2020, to January 6, 2021), followed by another chapter detailing how members of Congress experienced that dreadful day, leading to Trump’s even more unique and strange second impeachment.
Once again there were divisions among the Democrats about whether and how to proceed. Again, Jerry Nadler was all in for impeachment, but Adam Schiff was more cautious. « At the Speaker’s personal request, he’d been making the case privately to fellow Democrats all week: if they went after the president in his waning days in office, it would look like they were just trying to keep him from running again. President-elect Biden was also clearly worried that if Congress got bogged down in another impeachment trial, it would upend his chances of accomplishing anything during his first months in office. Democrats, Schiff had told colleagues privately that week, ‘should be on the same page as the new president’.” Schiff also foresaw the ultimate outcome. « A second impeachment would likely end exactly as the first had, Schiff told the others on the call, with Democrats on one side and Republicans on another. What was the point, he asked, when acquittal was likely a foregone conclusion? »
In the immediate aftermath of January 6, the obvious – if unprecedented and extreme – way to address the Trump problem (and avoid another pointless impeachment exercise) would have been the 25th Amendment, but that would, of course, required the cooperation of Vice President Pence, which was hardly to be expected. Increasingly, it seemed to the Speaker, « A second impeachment might be the only way to keep Trump in line. »
The advantages of a more bipartisan impeachment effort this time than the previous one were obvious to Congressman Raskin, but in practice that proved beyond what could be accomplished. « It was one thing to vote to impeach, but entirely another for a Republican to join Democrats in prosecuting the leader of the Republican Party. Many of the ten House Republicans who voted to impeach were getting death threats. » Thus, Raskin never asked Liz Cheney to join the impeachment team. « It would be too much for her, he reasoned to himself. What he didn’t realize then was that Cheney was so determined to end the era of Trumpism that if he just asked for her help convicting him, she would have jumped at the chance. He would come to realize that only when she told him so, weeks after the trial was over. »
The story of how Republicans like MCConnell and Graham briefly flirted with abandoning Trump but then were pulled back from that brink is a familiar one, which the authors retell here. The important point, in retrospect, is that the the failure to convict Trump (and disqualify him from returning to office) created the situation we are in now, in which Trump is still the savior-messiah figure for far too many Republicans – and could conceivably be voted back into the White House in two years.
The authors conclude: « First, that Pelosi’s initial gut instincts on impeachment were correct: Impeachment must be bipartisan to work. And second: Impeachment now appears destined to become a political weapon instead of a failsafe instrument to bring a president abusing office to justice. »
