"World" editorial. Donald Trump made history for good on Wednesday, December 18. He is the third President of the United States to be subject to impeachment proceedings. Only Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 – Richard Nixon preferred to resign in 1974 rather than suffer such an affront – had to answer to Congress for their actions.
Republican billionaire accused of "abuse of power" for attempting to enlist the Ukrainian president in his 2020 re-election campaign. Military aid to this country has been reportedly conditional on the opening of a judicial investigation against the son of one of its main opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Since the start of this procedure, for lack of a Senate majority, the Democrats know that Donald Trump is very likely to be in fine acquitted. A dilemma therefore arose. Either the Democrats closed their eyes to this matter, or they chose to uncover it, for the record.
The gravity of the facts complained of, the abuse of power for personal gain, makes derisory the indictment of Democrat Bill Clinton by the Republicans in 1998, prosecuted for perjury intended to mask an embarrassing extramarital affair. The White House’s obstructing strategy, however, deprived Democrats of testimonies from Donald Trump’s relatives who allegedly established an attempt to blackmail the president without possible contradiction.
The "V theoreme Avenue »
The House of Representatives considered that it had nothing to gain from lengthy judicial guerrilla warfare to obtain testimony from the president's right-hand man, Mick Mulvaney, or from his national security adviser, John Bolton, who was dismissed in September. She chose to move forward and inevitably made her case less convincing. She had to be content with a wealth of information from diplomats and advisers who chose to deliver their share of the truth.
The first option, that of looking away, was probably the most comfortable. It saved a battle lost in advance and spared the animosity of a president who tolerates no checks and balances. This choice of cynicism which reigns supreme in the White House amounted to validating the "theorem of the Ve Avenue ”, the one put forward by Donald Trump himself, according to which he could shoot passers-by striding along the famous New York artery without losing a single voter.
But the Democrats have made the second choice, that of sanctioning a prohibited behavior in the House of Representatives by the Constitution and thus remain faithful to the oath taken by any elected official to respect and protect the cornerstone of American democracy. As a sign of this hierarchy of values, this choice was also that of the overwhelming majority of representatives elected in November 2018 in ridings won two years earlier by Donald Trump. They favored principles over electoral calculations.
Democrats are certainly not free from reproach. Some of them, led astray by anger, have multiplied the remarks against the president which today fuel the republican accusations regarding a procedure which would be motivated only by hatred.
The rejection of cynicism, however, is to the credit of the Democrats. It will allow voters, on November 3, 2020, to vote with full knowledge of the facts, even if, at this stage, opinion remains very divided on this procedure.
