Politics

We’re told over and over by fair-weather constitutional scholars that impeachment is a 'political process.' Which is to say: it’s not strictly to do with statutes being violated or any narrow legalistic calculation, but rather a wholesale consideration of the power dynamics within the American system of government. Let’s therefore examine one of the central political arguments presented by advocates of impeachment, namely Nancy Pelosi, whose about-face on the issue this week has ensured several months of all-consuming national melodrama. Announcing that a formal impeachment inquiry has been initiated, Pelosi declared that Donald Trump had 'betrayed' the country.

Poor Joseph Maguire. The acting head of the intelligence agencies sure was in an awful predicament as he testified before the House Intelligence Committee. The former Navy SEAL was thrashing about to avoid becoming entangled in the net of the Democratic inquiry, swimming in murkier waters than he had ever encountered before. Indeed, at one point he confessed that he never would have accepted his post had he been aware of the whistleblower report that sounded an alarm about what Adam Schiff deemed the ‘nefarious’ activities about President Trump and his top aides.How different from Corey Lewandowski, who appears to be headed to the White House to help lead the defense of Trump!

I am not thinking of that scene at the beginning of Dickens’s novel where Mr Blotton says he regards Mr Pickwick as a 'humbug'. That was nice, especially when Mr Pickwick angrily demands to know whether the Rt. Honorable gentleman called him a humbug in its ordinary or 'common sense'. No, no responded Mr Blotton, he had 'merely considered him a humbug in a Pickwickian point of view'. Well, that’s all right then, rejoined Mr Pickwick, and peace and amity reigned once more among the members of the Pickwick Club. There is a lesson in there somewhere for the Democrats, but when it comes to their virulent case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, more pertinent is the episode describing the case of Bardell v. Pickwick.

Is Donald Trump going to be impeached? Nancy Pelosi is not giving herself much room to maneuver: once a Democratic-led committee of inquiry is assembled, its results are a foregone conclusion. It will recommend impeachment — to fail to do so would only strengthen the president and make Democrats look stupid on the eve of an election. As things are, Pelosi evidently found the pressure from within her party already too great to withstand: her sense of the political risks of impeachment was outweighed by her sense of the danger to her own position from continuing to resist it. So the die is cast. Perhaps this tells us, too, that Joe Biden’s support for the Democratic nomination is dwindling behind the scenes.

Spin the magic wheel: click, click, click, click, click — click — click: Ukraine! We’re all going to Ukraine! Another week, another pseudo-scandal fomented by anonymous anti-Trump actors in the 'intelligence community' and fanned into attention-grabbing headlines by an impatient, irresponsible press. Can anyone keep them all straight? They rise like noxious bubbles from the cauldron of deep-state anti-Trump sentiment, only to pass away almost immediately, carried off by their own insubstantiality and the contrasting bright-light series of real achievements on the part of the Trump administration.

This article is in The Spectator’s inaugural US edition. Subscribe here to get yours. ‘He ran twice for president and lost when he didn’t have dementia,’ a veteran Democratic party operative remarked to me earlier in the year apropos Joe Biden. ‘So why should we think he’d win now he does have dementia?’ It was a fair question, to which the answer could be: (a) maybe he does have dementia, but so what? Ronald Reagan had dementia for at least part of his presidency (how early this manifested is open to argument — first or second term?

This is a story about some kittens and a groundhog, and a politician who should not be allowed to go near kittens and groundhogs. Or anywhere near politics, for that matter. We begin in a very liberal enclave of very liberal Brooklyn, whereupon this Thursday evening, I hosted a group discussion in my backyard to talk about climate change. Because there are still a bunch of Democrats running for president, including several that I am very sick of hearing about, I instituted a ground rule: anyone who derailed the discussion by hyping up a presidential candidate had to put a dollar in the ‘Bill de Blasio Jar’ and it would be donated to his presidential campaign. I took this very seriously.

With the appointment of Robert C. O’Brien to serve as national security adviser, Donald Trump will once more disappoint his America First backers. They were hoping that Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor would get the nod. Instead, Trump has gone with a Republican establishment figure who views China as the biggest threat to American national security. As always, Trump was bullish on his new hire: 'I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!' As Trump national security adviser number 4, O’Brien is expected to bring some calm to the roiling waters of the NSC, where its heads have repeatedly capsized, whether it's Michael Flynn, H.R. McMaster, or John Bolton.

Conservative sadbois like two things: hot moms and Middle Eastern despots. Enter Tulsi Gabbard, the comely representative for Hawaii’s second congressional district. The single lock of gray hair tucked behind her ear and her array of red pants-suits give her an almost Palinesque allure. Her secret friendship with Bashar al-Assad and visceral hatred for the House of Saud brings us all back to our political puberty: hiding copies of The American Conservative under our beds, taking them out only when our parents weren’t home and fantasizing madly about the end of American Empire. Knowing only that, we can hardly blame an aging fogey who finds himself crushing on Rep. Gabbard.