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I wish I were as smart as Nancy Pelosi.
And I wish my favorite Congressional representative weren’t about to celebrate her 80th birthday this March.
And regardless, I wish she were running for President.
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From the moment the word “impeachment” was first uttered early in the Trump regime, we’ve heard a great deal about the President’s crimes and misdemeanors. We’ve heard a great deal about his egotistical, unethical, hurtful, and divisive acts and pronouncements. We’ve heard about obstruction of justice and less than perfect phone calls with foreign leaders.
But if you’ve ever tuned in to Fox News for even three minutes, you’ve also heard the evidence against the President called hearsay, irrelevant, and untrue. You’ve heard that in spite of the testimony of a long list of dedicated civil servants, the case against him is paper thin.
Hearing these denials stated so directly and fervently gives us cause for a moment. For just a second, it almost makes us consider the possibility that maybe we’re wrong and maybe they’re right. But quickly we come back to our senses when we remember that these are the same people who have said that global warming doesn’t exist, that climate change is a hoax. The evidence is not strong, they say. That case, just like the case against Trump, is paper thin.
But hearing the way in which the issues were framed by Pelosi, in terms of concerns expressed by the writers of the Constitution, was chilling. For me, listening to her recite from various sections of the Constitution placed the United States of the 18th century side by side with America in the twenty-first–and the parallels were amazing.
Those who crafted the Constitution were acutely sensitive to abuses of power. They had just experienced an oppressive king who had ruled arbitrarily, and they and their compatriots had risked their lives to assure that this would never happen again. With so many other crucial issues calling for their attention, they wrote about impeachment nonetheless, to make part of the this new nation’s credo that we would never again tolerate “monarchy,” rule by one person who could arbitrarily and without restraint declare himself above the law. Such behavior, they said in their wisdom, should not and would not go unrecognized or unpunished.
When Pelosi quoted from the document that defines us as a nation, that provides the basis for America as a democracy, it seemed to me as if she were quoting from a committee that had written about Trump’s abuses of power. What they feared back then and what we were experiencing now, over two hundred years later, seemed one and the same.
I’ve thought a great deal about this President and why the manner by which he rules is repugnant. Uncritically, I will admit to myself, I had called his style contrary to the principles of democracy. But listening to Pelosi’s framing of why this President cannot be allowed to continue to act in his current manner has transformed my understanding and crystallized my thinking. Bravo to you, Ms. Speaker.
Nancy Pelosi rules (or at least she should).
