In mid-December of 2019, the Democrat-led United States House adopted two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump in what was purely political theater. Less than two months later, in a forgone conclusion, the United States Senate voted for the president’s acquittal.
Four years later, the Republican-led House voted on Wednesday to formalize its inquiry in returning the impeachment favor against President Joe Biden, with another forgone conclusion the almost certain result if the inquiry ever graduates to a full House vote and then a Senate trial.
The American people, in one loud voice, should say “Enough.”
Enough with the slap fight that began with proceedings against President Bill Clinton over reckless but not impeachable behavior some 25 years ago. Enough with glossing over the more important business of the country to extract a pound of flesh from the president of the opposing party. Enough with making the august responsibility of the removal of a president from office into a partisan parlor game. Just enough.
We’re not saying the smoke of Biden’s foreign business dealings might not have fire behind it. But there were other ways of continuing to investigate the breadcrumbs of scandal without an impeachment inquiry. And if those breadcrumbs led to something substantial — illegal as opposed to unethical — then further action was warranted.
Besides, as Washington Post columnist Jim Geraghty pointed out in this space Thursday, Biden is already on the ropes. Seen by much of the public, including many of his own party, as the doddering 80-year-old he is, he is behind the poisonous Trump in polling for the 2024 election as well as in polls in critical swing states.
As Geraghty succinctly put in, “Biden is, by the standards of a sitting president, pretty darn unpopular right now.”
The next 10-plus months are not likely to make him into a efficient executive worth re-electing, either. The rate of inflation may continue to improve, but prices are still sky high from the previous months of inflation during his watch. Two foreign wars have broken out during his tenure, both involving U.S. support though not troops, but neither shows signs of winding down. And then there’s his embarrassing, handpicked vice president who can’t be ditched for fear of losing a large swath of supporters.
Left alone, the president — even with a supportive national media — doesn’t have a whole lot going for him.
But an impeachment inquiry could do for Biden what Trump’s first impeachment did for him (and, for that matter, what Clinton’s did for him). Trump’s job approval ratings, per the Gallup Daily tracking average, were the highest of his presidency, just before, during and after his Senate trial in early 2020.
A majority of the public believed Trump was being impeached over politics, not, as contained in the Constitution, for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
As such, just before the specter of COVID, he was seen as almost a shoo-in for re-election.
The timing is slightly different for Biden. The inquiry into whether he leveraged the office of vice president in the Obama administration to enrich his family through foreign businesses will take place alongside legal proceedings for Trump’s four criminal cases during the election year.
The national media will give any actions in Trumpworld more attention and less to the impeachment inquiry unless damning evidence is uncovered. And if none is uncovered, some voters will rightly believe Biden is being pursued in a political theater as Trump was four years ago and find sympathy for him.
Wednesday’s vote to formalize the proceedings was strictly on party lines, with 221 Republicans voting for it and 212 Democrats voting against it. It would have taken only five Republicans to say they didn’t think the business met the level of an impeachment inquiry to keep proceedings from going forward, but it would have been political suicide for those who made such a vote.
That being said, though three presidents have been impeached in the House (Andrew Johnson, Clinton and Trump), others have had inquiries opened against them that did not result in impeachments. They include John Tyler in 1843, James Buchanan in 1860, Andrew Johnson in 1867 (prior to the successful inquiry) and Richard Nixon in 1974 (who resigned before a likely impeachment trial).
So it’s not set in stone that Biden ever will face a full impeachment vote, but Republican House members — already suspect about their governing abilities after two speaker vote circuses — will only look desperate if their inquiry comes to nothing.
It’s too late to stop the inquiry train now, but the better part of valor for the GOP would have been to allow the Biden presidency to melt down on its own. To date, it was doing a pretty fair job of just that.