Once as farce

It was 45 years ago this year:

Trump is guilty. Why there’s such resistance to this reality is an interesting question. My own best guess is that it is too disquieting a reality to grapple with. Someone who has deliberately betrayed his country and who is compromised by and under the thumb of a foreign despot clearly should not be President. But his supporters don’t accept that. And as long as they don’t there’s no path to removing him from power prior to 2020 and maybe even beyond. That means that for the present we are locked in a situation in which we must operate in a system in which the person with the most power is working for a foreign adversary, whether out of avarice or fear. That is a profoundly uncomfortable reality. Remaining agnostic on the big question is more comfortable.

That’s my theory. But my theory, the why, doesn’t really matter. The fact that the reality is real and that it’s too hard for many to accept is what matters.

That Garry Trudeau said what Josh Marshall said today.  The difference, of course, is that Marshall is a blogger (sort of), and WaPo is still a major newspaper which probably still wouldn't run this comic strip if the President were Trump instead of Nixon, and Mitchell were replaced with Manafort.*  And I remember quite well why there was "such resistance to this reality."  It's for the very reasons Marshall cites about the evidence against Trump:  it doesn't amount to proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Well, it doesn't if you don't want it to.  We are not a national jury, except in the sense that we the nation decide criminal culpability by majority agreement, not unanimous vote.  Hell, we can't even get the press to say Trump is a racist, for which there is very clear evidence; then again, there will never be enough evidence.  Because even if there is enough evidence, there will always be some on the jury (metaphorically) who will deny the evidence says what the majority agrees it says.

As I've said before, I know people who went to their graves (God rest them) convinced Nixon was railroaded.  That narrative has hardened into place over time; it was not universally acknowledged in 1974, and certainly not before Nixon resigned (the year the cartoon was submitted for publication).

We had a situation where the person with the most power was using it to operate a system to punish his enemies.  Nixon tried to use the FBI and the IRS to do that, but he did it clandestinely.  Perhaps Trump is doing that, too, but it seems unlikely, given his assaults on the government at all levels.  He is acting openly, trying to punish those who disagree with him by pulling their security clearances; but while this may be an illegal act if he does it to James Comey, it is largely seen as irrelevant to the lives of those of us who don't parlay our government service into a career as a talking head.  It's reprehensible and petty, yes, but we are all more affected by tariffs than by who has a security clearance.  We had a leader who had used his power to punish his political enemies (it turned out he didn't need the advantage; Nixon won in the greatest landslide in American presidential history; the only state McGovern carried was Massachusetts.  Nothing that could have been gained in the Watergate break-in added to that victory.).  But we are locked into this because of the Constitutional system that allows us to be led up this kind of blind alley.  And because we can't expect any system to protect us from our own stupidity.

Nixon was finally forced out of office because of the tapes.  It took a while; the controversy over even releasing them ran for months, if not a year or so.  I still remember Nixon fighting mightily to keep them secret, then going on TV with stacks of them around him, proclaiming how he wanted them released and had told his staff to "get them out".  He was a consummate liar, and Trump often reads like a student of Nixon's machinations; at least to me.  It doesn't seem clear anything will force Trump from office in the same way.  It would be better for the nation if he were, but then we get Mike Pence, so the improvement is minor.  A Democratic House now seems likely, and that can constrain and pester Trump for the last two years.  A Democratic Senate may not happen, but GOP control is razor thin there anyway, and either way Congress won't give Trump much to run on in 2020.

Will Congress at least try to constrain Trump?  That is really up to us.  Do we elect a Congress to impeach the sitting President?  Or even just to rein him in?  Or do we just elect those politicians who are as ideological as comic-book villains, and as effective?  It is not the issue of this state of affairs being reality, and "we" can't face it.  The collective "we" is, as I said, is like a jury, but without the legal directions of a judge and a set of limited facts presented for our examination for a limited time, and aimed at a defined conclusion (guilty/not guilty).  The collective "we" will never even agree on what "reality" is.  Fighting that fight only ends in frustration.  The most we can get is some effort to state what we agree and disagree with:  this is really what elections are about.  Not what we can agree and disagree on; elections are never about national consensus.  We can only act on what we think is true and correct, and call that a conclusion at least until the morning after the election.

Although I agree with Marshall and Mark Slackmeyer:  the President is guilty, guilty, guilty!

Now what?

*it's worth noting here that John Mitchell was Nixon's campaign manager in '68, and was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and conspiracy.  But the objection of WaPo to the cartoon was that Mitchell had not yet been convicted, and it was unseemly to abrogate the judicial system in such a serious matter, even as a matter of opinion.  Thus do we keep our fingers clean.