Trump's Acquittal Is Outrageous, But Entirely Precedented

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci via WHOtv.com)

The impeachment saga has ended, with the predictable acquittal of Donald Trump on both articles and equally predictable (though more understandable) shrieks of outrage from liberals who had followed the process every step of the way, engrossed by the whole affair as if it were the latest season in their favorite prestige TV program. At this point, the entire thing looks like it may have been a complete boondoggle, with a recent Gallup poll (one taken before the acquittal vote, even) putting Trump's approval rating at a record high of 49%. Maybe, I'm forced to admit, any impeachment effort—even of the sort I had previously endorsed—was doomed to be counterproductive and end by giving Trump at least the appearance of vindication. In any case, this one certainly doesn't seem to have had the intended effect.

It seems clear that, when it comes to Ukraine (the focus of the impeachment), Trump and his cronies have engaged in activities that are at best unethical, and could have disturbing ramifications if they become normal. It's also clear that these are far from the worst misdeeds that Donald Trump and Co. have engaged in. But for the time being, he's gotten off scot-free for all of it. A certain degree of outrage is not inappropriate.

At the same time, any attempt to portray Trump's acquittal as a scandalous New Low—for the Republican Party, Congress, the political system as a whole or whatever else—is badly misguided. No, the acquittal is far from shocking; rather, if Trump had somehow been convicted, that's what would have been a dramatic break from precedent.

The last president who faced any consequences for his misdeeds was one Richard M. Nixon, whom you might remember as the only American head of state to resign his office before his term was up. Even then, of course, there were limits on just how harsh his punishment would be: his successor, Gerald Ford, helpfully pardoned him for any crimes he may have committed while in office, leaving Nixon to remake himself as some kind of an elder statesmen in the last decades of his life. All he had done, after all, was preside over an extensive campaign to destroy his democratic opposition and then try to cover up the full extent of his henchmen's shenanigans when a few clumsy burglars got caught.

Ever since then, Nixon's famous maxim that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal" has held basically true, no matter what "it" happens to be. When Ronald Reagan's administration subverted the will of Congress to funnel money to right-wing terrorists in Latin America, he wasn't even impeached for it. Nor was George W. Bush when his administration lied the country into an illegal and murderous war, set up a massive international torture regime, and engaged in warrantless surveillance on a systematic scale. No; Ronald Reagan went on to be remembered as a sort of patron saint of modern conservatism that even many liberals have paid a cautious sort of respect to, and Bush can now be seen hanging out with high-profile liberals like Ellen DeGeneres and former First Lady Michelle Obama.

Between Nixon's resignation and Trump's impeachment, the only very notable attempt to punish a president for his wrongdoings, real or imagined, was the utterly ridiculous impeachment of Bill Clinton for lying under oath about receiving oral sex. Not, we should note, that grave misdeeds were conveniently confined to Republican presidents: Clinton's bombing of Kosovo without Congressional approval was a flagrant violation of both the constitution and the War Powers Resolution, while Obama continued (and expanded) unconstitutional NSA surveillance programs and literally put a hit out on an American citizen without any pretense of due process. Oh, well.

So sure, vent your spleen about Trump's acquittal if, unlike me, you feel something other than a dull sense of relief that we've reached the denouement of the impeachment soap opera and a feeble sort of disgust about both how the entire thing was handled as well as the end result of it all. But don't delude yourself. This is just the latest example of presidents of both parties being able to get away with (both figurative and literal) murder. Any outrage about the acquittal should also extend to the fact that the notions of "separation of powers" and "checks and balances" have increasingly become a quaint antiquity over the past decades. What's exceptional isn't that Trump was acquitted. It's that he was ever even impeached to begin with.