In his latest column at Crooked.com, Brian Beutler makes a couple points that nicely supplement the overall argument I made yesterday as to why an extended and broad impeachment inquiry makes the most sense for Democrats and the good of the country. Beutler has been arguing strenuously for a broader impeachment effort, but this piece acknowledges the current state of play by suggesting a lemonade-out-of-lemons compromise: let the Democrats move forward the Ukraine-related articles of impeachment, since these involve the existential matter of the 2020 election and thus an overriding emergency, but keep open other avenues of the impeachment inquiry, with more articles to follow.
But there’s a specific point he makes that I think strengthens what I was trying to say yesterday: if the ultimate goal of impeachment includes an effort to make the GOP pay a price for their refusal to take their constitutional responsibilities seriously regarding the president’s bad acts, then the least Democrats can do is make them vote multiple times for multiple articles of impeachment. In this way, Beutler says, the Democrats could make it that much harder for the GOP to assert meaningful distance between any of Trump’s impeachable, corrupt acts and the party’s complicity in covering those up.
Beutler makes a second observation that also provides a great summation of why he thinks the impeachment inquiry should keep going:
Closing the inquiry with the passage of narrow articles of impeachment will be the end of the line for most if not all efforts to expose the full breadth of Trump’s abuses of power. Information the public is entitled to ahead of the 2020 election will remain indefinitely hidden. By contrast, the threat of a second Senate trial pertaining to Trump’s obstruction of Congress, his self-enrichment, his seizure of federal dollars for personal gain, his financial crimes, or for still-concealed aspects of his corrupt foreign policy would preserve the House’s lone means of obtaining new information and commanding the public’s attention to Trump’s misconduct. It might also give Republican senators pause about their intention to acquit Trump of the Ukraine shakedown in January. That vote will be relatively easy for them if they’re confident further evidence will never come to light, harder if they’ll live in a constant state of worry about what shoes are left to drop.
The prospect of making GOP senators “live in a constant state of worry” about oncoming revelations can also be described as the Democrats maintaining the initiative by rightly continuing to uncover the president’s corrupt and impeachable acts. But Beutler’s point about the investigation making public all sorts of information that voters are entitled to have particularly caught my imagination. Separate and apart from Trump’s corrupt acts, the public’s basic right to know what its government is doing, and why, might still emerge as one of the overarching lessons of the Trump administration. In terms of impeachment, it’s an idea that, if wielded by the Democrats, can help refute aspersions that theirs is simply a “partisan” inquiry rather than a necessary defense of our constitutional order.
For example, whether or not you agree that he should be removed from office, it’s indefensible for President Trump to take the position that no close advisors who had dealings with him on the Ukraine plot will be allowed to testify. The availability of information necessary to appraise the actions of our leaders is separate from whether or not Trump should be removed from office, and is a bedrock requirement of any democracy. Beutler suggests that we need information about the president’s possible abuses to make an informed decision in 2020; the reverse of this, that without it we are actively being kept in a uninformed state, is another non-partisan point that strengthens the impeachment effort, but that also stands quite powerfully on its own merits. If the president is innocent, why won’t he let the people who can prove it testify? This question answers itself, but carries a democratic power separate from its foregone conclusion. The president’s advisors ultimately serve the public, not him, and we cannot make informed decisions about our government without adequate information. This is hardly a partisan position.