As Nancy Pelosi brought down the gavel on the second vote to impeach President Donald Trump on Wednesday night, she silenced a Democratic colleague. With a glare and a hand gesture the speaker of the House of Representatives shushed the congressman who had voiced a solo cheer, breaching her instructions earlier in the day that Democrats should maintain a solemn silence when the vote was announced.
Like all aspects of the impeachment inquiry, the outcome of Wednesday’s vote was both carefully stage-managed and inevitable. Trump has been heading inexorably towards impeachment since Pelosi announced the inquiry in September.
Even as Trump and his supporters have dismissed the process as 'impeachment lite', his behaviour in recent days suggests that it troubles him
Having resisted calls from some more liberal members of her party to impeach Trump on foot of the investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election, Pelosi chose to pursue impeachment after details of a July phone call between the president and his Ukrainian counterpart surfaced. A seasoned political operator, Pelosi was well aware of the political dangers, mindful of the boost her own party received when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was impeached. But as she said on Wednesday, Trump’s “reckless action” made impeachment necessary. “He gave us no choice,” she said.
This sense of inevitability will continue as the process moves to the Senate. Trump will almost certainly be cleared in next year’s trial given Republicans’ majority in the upper chamber.
But the inevitability of the outcome should not make the gravity of the impeachment any less momentous. Trump has become only the third US president to be impeached. Even as Trump and his supporters have dismissed the process as “impeachment lite”, his behaviour in recent days suggests that it troubles him. His six-page letter to Pelosi on the eve of the vote offered a window into the president’s psychological state. Filled with inaccuracies, lacking basic presidential decorum, its tone veered between defiance and self-pity, as the president raged against what he termed a “coup” and revealingly spoke about the impact of impeachment on his family.
While Trump’s behaviour in eliciting foreign interference undoubtedly reaches the threshold of impeachable conduct, the process has raised questions about the suitability of impeachment as a tool to hold a president accountable.
The authors of the US constitution included an impeachment clause to guard against a future monarchical president. Impeaching a president for “high crimes and misdemeanours” came with strict conditions, including the need for a two-third majority in the Senate to convict. But even then some saw the inherent weaknesses of the system.
Alexander Hamilton predicted that impeachment would “divide” the community “into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused”. He warned that it would “connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or the other”. As a result, the outcome would be determined by the “comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt”.
Impeachment in the age of Trump shows the limitations of a method of accountability that depends on the objective judgment of elected representatives.
A crucial difference between the Trump and Clinton impeachment is the increasingly tribal nature of US politics in 2019.
While the Clinton presidency in many ways spawned the deep partisanship that has come to characterise American politics – his clashes with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives under the command of Newt Gingrich were infamous – there were glimpses of a bipartisan consensus.
The unanimous vote by Republicans against impeachment on Wednesday night shows how far the Republican Party has become the party of Trump
When Clinton was impeached on December 19th, 1998, dozens of Republicans crossed the aisle to vote against impeachment, with five Democrats voting against. Likewise, in the subsequent senate trial 10 Republicans found Clinton not guilty of the first article, while five cleared him on the second count.
Similarly, during the Nixon impeachment, a core group of Republican and Democrat members of the House judiciary committee began meeting in secret as the gravity of the Watergate charges began to emerge.
Since the Trump impeachment inquiry began there have been no such efforts at bipartisanship. The unanimous vote by Republicans against impeachment on Wednesday night shows how far the Republican Party has become the party of Trump – a proposition that would have been unthinkable four years ago when many moderate Republicans considered the prospect of a Trump presidency with disdain. Even the Republicans who have already announced they are not running next year – a position that could theoretically allow them to vote with their conscience – were not persuaded to break with the president, despite the evidence that he asked a foreign power to interfere in an election.
The argument about partisanship is also likely to be the next battleground as America braces itself for a contentious trial in the Senate. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell infuriated Democrats by saying last week that he was not an impartial juror and would co-ordinate how the trial is run with the White House.
This has prompted Pelosi to suggest on Wednesday that she could delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate until House Democrats get assurances that the trial will be fair. In particular, Democrats have said that witnesses should testify, a proposal opposed by McConnell who favours a short trial. While Pelosi’s threat to withhold the articles is unprecedented, it could give the House some leverage before it goes to the Senate where Republicans will have control of the process given their majority.
In the meantime as Congress squabbles about the scope and format of the Senate trial, the impeachment process is unlikely to change many minds in America. Polls show very little change in public opinion since the impeachment hearings began. With Trump continuing to be a polarising figure, the forthcoming impeachment trial is only likely to deepen the divides in this already divided country.
Suzanne Lynch is Washington Correspondent