Let’s get to a point where our elected officials can focus on the long run

For almost three years we have been witnessing the partisan reality show that is our president and Congress. Now we have the current kerfuffle over the whistleblower who reported a recent phone conversation President Donald Trump had with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, which has apparently caused Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to finally succumb to pressure from her party and allow a presidential impeachment investigation to get under way.

Have the "insiders" in our nation's Capital who declared war on our "outsider" president before he was inaugurated, forgotten that what he is now accused of doing is not unlike activity that their political parties have participated in, and kept secret?

The now-sanctioned impeachment investigation, if it is truly searching and thorough, should reveal that many former presidents of the United States have made secret deals with foreign officials, for better or for worse. It is also very likely that most, if not all, past presidents' conversations with foreign officials, especially those who are "friendly" to the United States, and thus not likely to "blow the whistle," have included all manner of extemporaneous, candid comments and requests. And we will likely never know how many presidents have used personal advisors like Rudy Giuliani for "diplomatic" missions, as President Franklin Roosevelt did with Harry Hopkins.

In fact, it is probable that, when he was vice president, Joe Biden, then-President Barak Obama, and those who worked for them, engaged in the same kind of plain talk with foreign officials about matters that favored them, their administration and their political party.

Trump's detractors also say in essence, that because he is now running for president, Biden should be exempt from scrutiny by the current executive branch. If that's so, and he is elected president, and then if then-former President Trump chose to run against him at the end of his first term, would Trump be similarly immunized from investigation by Biden's executive branch? Or does that also depend on whose foot the accuser says the shoe is on?

Conflicts like this were anticipated by our Constitution, which was designed by its Framers not to assume smooth sailing. The Founders created our "Republican Form of government" (U.S. Const. Art IV, section 4) on the assumption that partisan elected officials would act in their own self-interest. "The Federalist" No. 10 (James Madison) (Jacob E. Cooke, ed. 1961), at p.59 ("[T]he principal task of modern Legislation involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operation of Government."); Id. at p. 60 ("Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm"); Id. No. 51 (James Madison) at p. 349 ("But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachment from the others. The provision for defence must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate with the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."). But see id. No. 76 (Alexander Hamilton) at p. 513-514 ("The supposition of universal venality in human nature is little less an error in political reasoning than the supposition of universal rectitude. The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind."). Maybe all hope is not lost?

It seems unlikely that the Framers expected the anticipated rough and tumble of conflict between the parties and factions in the government to be impeachable offenses ("The Federalist," No. 65 (Alexander Hamilton) at p. 439 ("[impeachable offenses] relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.")), but at the end of the day, as President Gerald Ford said in 1970 when he was still House majority leader: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House or Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."

Here, the way things seem to be shaping up, Trump's "defence" is likely to be "commensurate with the ... attack" ("The Federalist," No.10), and the battle is about to be joined. Politics is a messy business, and there is plenty of claimed misbehavior to go around.

But neither of our country's two presidential impeachments have resulted in a conviction by the Senate, although a bipartisan effort led President Richard Nixon to resign. Since it seems unlikely that President Trump would resign, wouldn't it be more prudent, and better for the country in the long run, for the House to let the voters decide who wins next year? See, Jon Meacham, "American Lion" (Random House Paperback Ed. 2009) at pp. 188-89 (Henry Clay believed that, if impeached, President Andrew Jackson was too popular to be convicted in the Senate.)

In their recent book, "Impeachment, An American History" (Modern Library 2018), authors Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftaly, Peter Baker and Jeffrey A. Engle study the impeachment proceedings of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, concluding, in part:

"So long as a president is, as his oath of office demands, performing 'to the best of his abilities,' voters should be his ultimate judge. Id. at p. 40....

"It is hard to imagine [President Trump being convicted in the Senate] absent some tectonic shift in our current political universe, not because senators lack conviction or devotion to democratic ideals, but rather because they answer to a higher authority: voters. Morality derives from a group's consensus of right and wrong, and nowhere more than in politics. Determinations of right and wrong require evaluation of circumstances, motive, and result. Given that we live in a tribal political environment unable to agree on basic facts, we are unlikely to generate the widespread moral outrage necessary to prompt senators to risk eviction by voting against their constituents or against their party. Id. at pp. 222-223."

Prithee the president, senators and members of Congress we elected to represent us get to a point where they will start to focus on what's good for our country as a whole, and in the long run. But, sadly, it's probable that they will instead continue to pull out all the stops to get themselves and their party's candidates elected next year, come what may. 