On Fitness and Impeachment

First, the conclusion: Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States, and should therefore be impeached and removed from office.

"Fitness" is not determined by partisanship or ideology. It is not a matter of disagreeing with particular policies. It is, rather, a question of having the capacity and demeanor to meet the high standards, expectations, and obligations of the presidency. Of evincing an ability and willingness to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. To uphold the rule of law. To safeguard the country's institutions.

Many of us have always understood that Trump is unfit, which is why he received so extraordinarily few media endorsements, including from outlets that reliably endorse Republicans, in the 2016 election. The first two-and-one-half years of his presidency have more than validated our earlier judgement.

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The litany is extensive, overarching, unnuanced, uncapricious, ineluctable. Like the endorsements table above, it transcends mere partisan complaint to describe something more fundamental, pervasive, and unsubtlely definitive of core character and ability. The unfitness of Donald Trump is an all-encompassing phenomenon.

Trump is unfit because he is corrupt. A lifetime of tax fraud is one example. Profiting from the presidency, including open violation of the Constitution's Emoluments clause, is another. The appointment of corrupt and grifting cabinet secretaries, and the elevation of family members to high positions, another still.

Trump is unfit because he is fundamentally dishonest. Trump lies continually, many times per day. Many of his lies are knowing and deliberate. Others fall in the category of  "bullshit," in which he neither knows nor cares what is true, but simply makes things up to suit the moment's whim.

Trump is unfit because he is psychologically unstable. Trump is a narcissist who is unable to separate the good of the country from his own insatiable craving for adulation and self-aggrandizement.

Trump is unfit because he is incurious and ignorant. More of what he "knows" comes from watching cable television than from listening to expert advisors. Trump neither reads nor, apparently, learns.

Trump is unfit because he favors authoritarian leaders, while disdaining close allies who exemplify democratic ideals. He blithely accepts the mere word of a ruthless dictator over the unanimous findings of his own intelligence community.

Trump is unfit because he divides and inflames. He stokes racist and ethnic fears and divisions, and promotes violence. A president's job is to unite, but Trump does exactly the opposite.

Trump is unfit because he's unmoored from reality. He traffics in  bizarre conspiracy theories, such as birtherism, or the claim that "thousands and thousands" of New Jersey Muslims celebrated on 9/11, or that Ted Cruz's father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. Such unhinged inability to discern or think critically is both dangerous and unseemly in a president.

Trump is unfit because he's a destroyer of norms and institutions. He routinely calls the press "the enemy of the people" because it reports facts that he finds uncongenial. He has abused the pardon power of the presidency, and has suggested he will do so again, including to cover illegal activity by his subordinates. He maneuvers to subvert the will and constitutional prerogatives of Congress, such as regarding the appropriation of funds. He invokes "emergency" powers to get his way when he can't prevail in the political process. Much of what's required for government to function is normative rather than legal; a president who has no conception or good-faith care of norms is destructive of government itself.

Of course, all these aspects of unfitness are interconnected. Trump's completely false claim that millions of persons voted illegally in the 2016 election bears upon his psychological neediness, his inability to gauge reality, his willingness to promote egregious and self-serving falsehoods, and  his destruction of institutions—in this case public faith in the electoral system at the core of American democracy.

Impeachment normally focuses on specific illegalities or abuses, and rightly so. Thus articles of impeachment against Trump would include, among other things, campaign finance violations and obstruction of justice charges. And other offenses (such as abuse of power) not explicitly defined in law, but important to our founders, would rightly be considered.

But unfitness itself is cause for impeachment and removal, because of the clear and present danger, and ongoing harm, to the country and its institutions. Trump is a carnival barker, a huckster, and a buffoon: surely disqualifying characteristics in a president.

In a happier world this would be a question of patriotism, not partisanship. But in the world we inhabit Republicans are broadly unwilling to be a check on their president's profound, multifaceted unfitness. That makes them unfit too, which is something voters must never forget.

Copyright (C) 2019 James Michael Brennan, All Rights Reserved

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