Impeachment Takeaways

1. Among other things, Trump’s second impeachment has made it vividly clear for me that the vast majority of Republican leaders have no backbone and zero moral authority. I do not know if I am more angry at them or sad for our country. Every single senator who voted “not guilty” and every Representative who voted against the impeachment will be judged on the wrong side of history and should be voted out of office. Sadly they won’t because too many voters have drunk the kool-aid and bought into the Big Lie of the “stolen” election.

The GOP should be forever now known as one CNN commentator has said, the “Grand Ostrich Party”. They have stuck their collective heads in the sand even when their own lives were endangered for fear that they might be voted out of office, choosing their political fortune over their oath to the constitution. Here in Oregon this shameful dereliction of duty was evident in the claim of party leaders that Jan. 6 was a “false flag” operation, a claim so outlandish that every Republican member of the Oregon House signed a letter refuting the charge.

2. There were notable exceptions to the above, as witnessed by those good members of the Oregon legislature. In the four impeachment trials since the constitution was adopted there have been a total of eight votes for guilty by the party of the President. All eight were cast by Republicans, one in Trump’s first impeachment and seven in the second. Those seven Senators (Senator Romney voted guilty both times) are to be commended, especially those facing re-election in 2022.

Also notable was Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R – Washington) for calling attention to the phone call made by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to the President during the insurrection, pleading for his action to come to their defense. The response of the President, choosing to defend the rioters rather than members of Congress, is what promoted Rep. Beutler to support the Article of Impeachment (one of ten Republican votes in the House). That so few, however, have been willing to speak up in defense of a free and fair election and the clear choice of the American people does not bode well for democracy.

3. The defense team made a big argument of the hypocrisy of the House Managers for emphasizing Trump’s appeal to “fight like hell” when nearly every democratic Senator is on record using the same language. I admit, hearing so many politicians use such strong and at times even violent language made me cringe. But here’s the thing, not once could the defense team show where such language by Democrats resulted in a deadly riot. Furthermore, none of those references to fighting were made in a sustained attack to overturn an election.

Finally the greatest hypocrisy of all came from Senator Mitch McConnell, pronouncing that he likely would have found Trump guilty were he still President when it was McConnell himself who prevented the trial from occurring when that would have been possible. So while his condemnation of Trump delivered after the trial was particularly damning, he will be faulted most as the person above all others who could have done something about it and spectacularly failed to do so. Indeed, had he the backbone to vote “guilty” as he clearly believed Trump to be aside from his faulty constitutional argument, it is conceivable that nine more Senators would have followed him and their conscience to do the same, yielding a guilty victory that would have led to Trump’s ban from elected office. That such did not happen brings me to my next takeaway.

4. My father-in-law, born in 1910, thought Germans were stupid because they elected Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany in 1933, merely eight years after he was found guilty of treason for the “Beer Hall Putsch” in which he attempted a coup d’état. My father-in-law, a register Republican, would have been appalled to see the way in which so many people blindly followed Trump in this country, especially those foolish enough to storm the Capitol thinking that Trump had their back. Getting to know a few of those Germans who supported Hitler after moving to Berlin in 1978, I came to realize they were not all that different from the people of this country and that it was our democratic institutions more so than the will of the people that protect us from a popular demagogue. While we can be thankful that those institutions held when under the greatest attack since the Civil War, the Senate has left the door wide open for a repeat not just of Jan. 6, but of the entire effort by Mr. Trump to overturn the election.

On that violent day in DC I posted on FaceBook that we were seeing the Reichstag burn before our very eyes. Right country, wrong decade. Hitler’s attempted coup d’état in 1923 would have been the better comparison to Jan. 6. That attempt resulted in the deaths of four German police officers compared to three in Washington DC. Here’s the sobering thought – even though convicted for treason, Hitler used his status as a martyr for the cause to “make Germany great again” to become the world’s most notorious dictator. I don’t believe such will happen here, but just that it could happen is disturbing enough.

5. Another critical lesson from Germany hits even closer to home for me—the complicity of the German church in Hitler’s rise to power. Deutsche Christen as they are generally known, adopted the ideological principles of Nazism in an attempt to align the State Church (Landeskirche) with the Nazi Party. Not all of the churches bought into the effort by any means, but the German Church as a whole was successfully co-opted by Hitler, giving him religious justification for his efforts, including the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish problem.” Next to the Crusades, it is the most shameful period of church history, slightly redeemed by the courageous leaders of the Confessing Church (including Karl Barth, Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer) who refused to go along and formed a separate church that officially recognized Jesus Christ as their one and only Führer. (See the Barmen Declaration, primarily authored by Barth.)

It is one thing for devout people of faith to put aside the flawed characteristics of any politician because his or her policies align with one’s own beliefs, Lord knows I’ve done that myself, but the degree to which some within the church have sold out the essence of Christian faith in blind loyalty to Trump is no different to what Deutsche Christen did during the Nazi era. It took a couple of decades for not just the German Church but Christianity as a whole to deal with damage done by Deutsche Christen, that such a large segment of the church could be so closely aligned with such a racist and anti-Semitic theology. That same kind of alignment of certain prominent Christian leaders, predominantly white evangelicals, with Trump is hugely problematic for Christianity today. It may well be that we will need that kind of reckoning in the American church to restore credibility in the eyes of many for Christian faith.

6. There were a number of bright spots in the trial that moved me and were powerful testimonies for what this country stands. One of those was a rare moment of bipartisanship when the Majority Leader joined the Minority Leader calling for the Congressional Gold Medal to be awarded to Officer Eugene Goodman for not once, but twice taking action to save the lives of members of Congress. It was heartening to see that even in the midst of such fierce debate and disagreement, that Senators could unite in such a gesture of good will and support for not just Officer Goodman, but all those who put their lives on the line that day.

And there were some light moments, such as when one of the House Managers, after an objection led to some confusion and a brief period of chaos on the dais, stated, “I have been through many trials in my career and this is certainly one.” Laughter was noticeable from both sides of the aisle.

Two moments in the closing arguments were especially poignant. One was House Manager Jamie Raskin, speaking about the conversation with his children at home the night before. One of the video clips shown that day was of a protestor telling his children to say good-bye to their father because he might not being coming home. Raskin, thinking as a prosecutor, only saw the clip as evidence to the mindset of those intent on violence to “stop the steal” at the behest of the President. His daughter, Hanna, however saw it differently. It made her sad, Raskin told the Senators. Sad that any child would ever have to think they might not see their parent again. It took the view of his young daughter to see the humanity of those parents and the real tragedy of Jan. 6, that the President’s lies would bring an American household to such a moment, a moment that no child should have to face.

The other moving moment for me came at the end of Rep. Joe Neguse’s closing argument. Referring to defense council’s claim that the impeachment was born of hate for the President, Mr. Neguse quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., saying, “I have decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bare.” Mr. Neguse, a descendant of immigrants from East Africa, went on to speak of his love for this country. He spoke of those moments when this country was at its best and his desire to protect it out of his love for what this country represents. The impeachment, he told the Senators, was not born out of hate for Mr. Trump, but love for the country, to preserve and protect what we hold dear.

If we will ever find any healing, any unity, in this country again, it will be because enough of us will have decided to stand up for truth, to work for justice and to stick with love.

Photo: (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times). Quotation added by the author. House Manager Jaime Raskin cited Exodus 23:2 in his closing argument as one that stuck with him from his years in Sunday School as a child.