As the crisis in the American presidency alarms, expands and deepens every day, I thought it could be instructive to examine what the U.S. Constitution says about when, if and how a president can be removed from office.
Are we there yet? Not for me or you to say, though we are all speculating about it — of that I am certain.
Is the incumbent the most dangerously ignorant and — seemingly to us lay people without professional knowledge of psychiatry and mental illness — a deeply flawed and disturbed man? A man who, by the nature of the office he holds, literally has the keys to more and greater power than anyone in recorded human history? Yes, objectively it seems so. It seems every day clearer within layman’s terms that he is, well, nuts.
There has never been in human history anyone with so much power at his disposal as the American president.
The United States bestrides the world, which these days incorporates the entire globe, as no power has before except perhaps the emperors of Rome in their known world.
But theirs was a smaller universe that encompassed the Mediterranean basin, North Africa, the modern Middle East. It reached into Gaul (now large parts of France and Germany) the Iberian Peninsula. It extended as far north as Britain and as far to the east as present day Romania.It was big, it was a lot, but it was not the entire planet. Today we hold influence over the entire planet. The whole of Earth.
Rome’s ultimate military tool and expression was the legionnaire’s short, flat, razor sharp broad sword, the elongated spear and the heavy shield of the legionnaire, supported by mobile chariots. Rome’s power came from the unforgiving and diligent use of all that in the highly disciplined maniples and cohorts of the legions, each legion comprised of perhaps 5,000 men, fighting in the coordinated Roman army square.
Rome’s emperors had no gunpowder, canon, artillery, aircraft, tanks or — or nuclear weapons. They had their legions and the legions’ discipline. There was only so much damage they could do if one Emperor or another turned out to be a madman — as more than a few did.
Now here, in the United States of America, 16 centuries after the Roman Empire collapsed finally, many have begun to examine American power as we find it in the hands of our presidents, particularly now in the hands of this president, and so many have begun to utter and mutter the word impeachment.
First I believe firmly that no one of my political persuasion, no Democrat, whether congressional leader, former national leader or plain citizen should be using that word right now.
If the necessity for its use comes to pass it must come from the Republican Party. Right now, the GOP, even such as it has become, owns both elected branches of the national government and — in all likelihood — shortly will own supreme power in the selected branch, the courts. So at this moment the Republicans are the sole owners of the crisis that has resulted from their sweeping victory last November.
Democrats do not have the votes to cause or accomplish any such action. Only Republicans do and they will not so much as consider it, much less act on it unless their leaders, their two highest ranking leaders decide to move congruently and concurrently in that direction: Or in the other direction available to them because there are in fact two ways to check and/or remove a president.
So the stark reality is that if there is to be any change in the presidency short of voluntary resignation, it will come from House Speaker Paul Ryan and/or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Or it will not come at all. And while it could come from impeachment it could also result from exercise of the 25th Amendment.
Part II of this Post will look at and explain impeachment and the 25th Amendment.
Peeling the Onion 