Wishful punditry

Mueller and a Blue House Could Bring Down Trump

President Nixon started in a relatively weak position. His misdeeds came to light during a period of opposition-party control, with Democrats able and willing to wield Congress’s investigative powers to the fullest. Prior to the hearings, Nixon enjoyed approval ratings: in the mid-50s among all Americans and well over 80 percent among Republicans. By August 1973, the Watergate hearings had dragged them down to just 31 percent nationally and a paltry 58 percent among co-partisans.

On August 9, 1974, with bipartisan articles of impeachment hanging over him, Nixon resigned.

President Donald Trump has thus far had a very different experience. For the past two years, Republican control of Congress has protected him from the public exposure Nixon and his staff had to endure. Now that the Democrats have taken back the House, the Trump administration will face a challenge from which it has been immune thus far: a far-reaching, aggressive, and highly public investigation of the kind that brought down Nixon.

So this is someone who actually believes that the difference between the investigation into Trump and the investigation into Nixon is about who is conducting it? Sorry, ace, but the real difference between the investigation into Trump and the investigation into Nixon was that Nixon was guilty as sin of what he was accused of doing, and there was plenty of evidence available to hang him out to dry.

There simply isn't any evidence out there that Trump has committed any crimes, much to the chagrin of his critics.

Moreover, while I am not sure how things were back in when Nixon was President, here in 2018 almost nobody takes "congressional investigations" seriously. Certainly nobody believes that congress can investigate "better" than the FBI or a special counsel who has been appointed (with an unlimited budge) to do nothing but investigate something. If, in fact, it was the case that people trusted congressional investigations, then there would not have been any call for a special counsel in the first place. It was always the position of Trump critics that a special counsel was needed to get to the bottom of the 2016 election.

Democratic control will bring two new advantages in the war on Trump. First, congressional committees hold an arsenal of investigative tools that can be called on with only majority-party assent. Chief among them is Congress’s subpoena power—its ability to compel the production of documents or the sworn testimony of witnesses in furtherance of a congressional investigation. That power can be exercised to produce anything from Trump’s much-discussed but as yet unseen tax returns to public testimony from his senior staff and family members (especially those who fit both descriptions). Moreover, due to a 2015 rule change pushed through by House Republicans, most House committees can now issue subpoenas on the authority of the chairperson alone, including three of the committees most likely to go after Trump: Oversight, Intelligence, and Foreign Affairs.

Well this is actually almost entirely false. While Congress has subpoena power, they are provided no more authority than the FBI or Special Counsel. If neither the FBI or special counsel has found any legitimate reason to subpoena the Presidents tax returns (for example) - then certainly Congress cannot do so. There are still fourth amendment protections involved, and Congressional oversight does not extend to what a President may or may not have done as a Private Citizen prior to him being President. In fact the authority of the Congressional oversight would fall far, far short of what the authority of Special Counsel would have. At least that was the argument from the left when they called so venomously for such an appointment to be made.

Second, Congress has the power to draw the results of any investigation into the harsh light of public scrutiny. The Watergate hearings were instrumental in bringing down Nixon because they forced Republicans to contend with damning testimony from the president’s closest aides, broadcast in prime time. Since Democrats today don’t control the Senate—let alone hold the two-thirds majority required for conviction on House impeachment charges—it’s all the more important for them to erode the president’s base of support before attempting impeachment.

This is "actually" what this is all about. Or at least it is in the world of wishful punditry. While Mueller is conducting an investigation behind the scenes, in a normal DOJ manner, Congress could demand that many of these witnesses testify publicly.

But again, the problem is that if Robert Mueller has not found any of these witnesses useful, and fails to tie the President or any of this close aides to Russia, then having these same witnesses testify publicly is not really going to turn public sentiment. The "assumption" that there is "damning testimony" just sitting out there if they call them before Congress is likely 100% back asswards wrong.

Now assuming that House Democrats would not start any competing investigation while Mueller is still doing his thing (and Congress would be silly to attempt to do so), whatever the House attempts will take place "after" Mueller has issued his report. By this time, I would believe that most of the country will want to put 2016 and Russia meddling "behind them" (especially if Mueller determines that there was no collusion). You are not going to change public opinion by having a bunch of House Democrats preening and chest thumping in front of the camera (which is what it would boil down to).

Republicans’ impeachment of Bill Clinton increased his approval rating as those on the left rallied around him. Today, Democrats would do well to keep their fingers off the trigger until the president’s approval has begun to crumble.

I think it would be more accurate to state that it was the entire concept of investigation after investigation over things that most of the country no longer cared about was what caused the backlash in Clinton's favor. The actual impeachment was just icing on the cake.

If the Mueller report comes up short, then the Democrats in the House stealing the baton and taking it for a run will likely just harden support with Trump voters, and probably create backlash from independents. The Democrats obviously have failed to learn from their experience with the Brett Kavanaugh fiasco, where they seemed to push way too hard over something that was dubious to start with. Time will tell if they make the same mistake of pushing more investigations into the Trump White House, at the expense of working across the aisle to solve problems.