During the Trump years I have often thought of the 1970s and ’80s, when my wife, Monique, and I were bringing up three sons in Concord.
We did not want them to be liars. We did not want them to brag. We wanted them to be kind even to those they disagreed with. We wanted them to be empathetic toward people who lacked our advantages. We wanted them to grow up to be good, giving citizens.
We had a lot of help in these matters because we lived in Concord. Teachers in the public schools were competent and caring. Local and state politicians were generally clean and public-spirited. Volunteers pitched in wherever they were needed to help run the homeless shelter, welcome refugees, coach youth sports, teach respect for the environment, serve in community organizations.
Much of this continues even now, as the country suffers through the third year of an administration whose leader has none of the qualities we wanted for our children. No honesty or modesty or equanimity or empathy or generosity.
I’ve often wondered what it is like for parents to have such a bully and a liar as our national leader. He has shaped a political party in his image, as nearly all Republicans abandoned the norms of public discourse and civility in support of Trump’s most evil tendencies and intentions.
From the beginning, President Trump’s political strategy has been to divide rather than unite us. He has made us cautious about speaking with neighbors who might not share our politics and caused deep divisions even within families. We know we shouldn’t be afraid to say what we think, but it’s harder now.
I’m as pessimistic as the next person over the outcome of the impeachment inquiry opened this past week by the House of Representatives, but I am glad it is finally happening. Donald Trump himself is an impeachable offense. He has scorned minorities and emboldened racists. He has whipped up hatred around the country and set an example of selfishness and arrogance that will be hard, if not impossible, to purge from our public life.
He has done his best to reshape the executive branch in his image. When it comes to challenging his crusade to make corruption the new norm in our government, impeachment is the last recourse. We have reached the point where we need to consider it.
The specifics of the impeachment case seem grave to me. Only in the world of Trump and his sycophants is it okay for a president of the United States to strong-arm a foreign leader to investigate an American political rival.
The request is part of a pattern. In 2016 Trump egged on Russian and his pal Vladimir Putin to supply all the dirt he could on Hillary Clinton. The evidence that Russia obliged him is clear.
More recently our president turned a deaf ear to the stern warnings in Robert Mueller’s report that Russia and other foreign countries would seek to influence the next election, too. We all know the cause of Trump’s deafness. It is a narcissism so profound that he sees the suggestion that he needed Russian help to defeat Clinton as a personal affront. He is not a public servant; he lives and breathes to serve himself, first and always.
Trump and his minions say the Democratic Party has been impeachment-crazed since day one. Although this is true of some Democrats, the record doesn’t support it for the party as a whole. For months and months, Democrats left the investigating to Mueller. Of course, they hoped his findings would condemn Trump’s actions more strongly than they did, but Mueller wisely put the onus on them.
Under the Constitution, it was up to Congress to explore whether the obstruction of justice case his report outlined rose to the level of an impeachable offense. Speaker Nancy Pelosi counseled caution on this question, and that is the course House Democrats took.
Pelosi reversed herself last week in the face of new allegations that Trump had personally cajoled a foreign leader dependent on U.S. money to revive an investigation of Joe Biden and his son. Biden, the former vice president, could be Trump’s opponent in the 2020 election.
Trump is doing his usual song and dance to make wrong seem right and lies seem true. It’s Biden and his son who are corrupt, he says. The impeachment inquiry is a joke, a hoax, a witch hunt, he says. “It was beautiful – it was just a perfect conversation,” he says of his call to the Ukrainian president.
These, my fellow Americans, are the fantasies of an emperor who has no clothes.
The truth lies in a thorough examination of the evidence and a sober discussion of whether Trump committed high crimes or misdemeanors and deserves to be removed.
So, now, yes to an impeachment inquiry. And let us all, please, block out the noise, listen carefully and think clearly. This is our duty as citizens.
(Mike Pride is editor emeritus of the Monitor and retired administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes.)