Much Ado About….What?

The Democrats had a plan all laid out.  They lined up a disgruntled federal employee, likely a holdover from the Obama Administration.  They met with this person and provided all the support necessary to bring forth a whistleblower complaint regarding a telephone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky.  After coordinating their strategy with their partners in the mainstream media, the Democrats launched their bombshell.  Per their breathtaking rollout, the President had threatened to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky agreed to investigate Hunter Biden’s (Slow Joe’s son) business dealings with the energy company Burisma.  Hold the phone and stop the train; this must be a crystal clear case of Presidential abuse of power and a perfect case of a quid pro quo arrangement rising to the astronomic level of high crimes and misdemeanors.  Everything was in place and things were advancing per the Democratic schedule until President Trump threw a wrench into the gears.  He released the contents of the telephone call.

It seems obvious that the Democrats had calculated that Trump, as he is wont to do, would clamp down on releasing any relevant information regarding the call and would throw up the barricades around the White House phone records.  In the SCIF room, essentially a bunker in the basement of a House office building, the House Democrats are now proceeding with secret and uber-controlled impeachment inquiry hearings under the auspices of Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee; using orchestrated leaks to craft the story line in their media partners’ outlets.  They anticipated they would be able to frame Trump’s refusal to release the telephone call’s contents as essential guilt.  They did not think he would release its contents.

Why is it that the reports of a second whistleblower fell flat on their face with little or no fanfare?  Why has there not been the anticipated, and likely planned, subsequent third and fourth and whatever whistleblower reports?  It is plain and simply because ALL of the whistleblower reports were rendered irrelevant once the contents of the call entered the public domain.  Why take a written complaint based on second or third hand knowledge of a call seriously when you can read for yourself the actual contents of the call?  The only relevance attached to the whistleblower complaint that remains is: what were its origins?  As the political connections of the original whistleblower continue to bleed out, it is becoming increasingly likely that the complaint is little more than the Steele Dossier reincarnated.  The details of the call are out there.  There is no need to talk about the complaint or the process.  If there was a high crime or misdemeanor involved in this conversation; then cite the exact crime or misdemeanor with the exact language in the conversation that constitutes the wrongdoing.

Now what about that quid pro quo business?  The Democratic theory goes that President Trump refused to release 400 million dollars in aid to the Ukraine unless Ukrainian President Zelensky agreed to investigate the Ukrainian company Burisma.  Why Burisma?  Was it because Joe Biden’s son sat on the board and was receiving a huge salary with little or no professional input?  Was it because it was a prime example of crony corruption in a nation that the U.S. was preparing to gift an investment of 400 million dollars to and Trump wanted them to clean up their act before receiving the money?  Who knows…it was likely a bit of both.  But the ultimate point is that the aid was never withheld.  Period.  President Obama withheld military aid from Ukraine for over a year and left the White House without ever sending it over there.  After Congressional approval of said aid, Trump withheld it for about six weeks and then released it; well before the fiscal year cutoff of September 30 that would have effectively eliminated the aid package.  The aid was released on September 11.   There has been no Ukrainian investigation of Burisma.  Where the heck is the quid pro quo?  Once again, we see all the sound and fury focused on the process and the peripheral issues relating to the aid when the simple fact is that the aid was released with no conditions.  Period.

Can any reasonable person doubt that prior Presidents have done the very things that President Trump is being pilloried for?  Has his execution of office behaviors really been so far removed from his predecessors?  Does his lack of judgment in certain instances and his arbitrary use of Presidential authority justify the bizarre resistance that we are seeing manifested?

The reality is that the Democrats began their attacks on the Trump Administration in a fashion quite similar to the initial Republican attacks on the first Obama Administration.  I think that the major difference between the two is the role played by the mainstream media.  At the very least, the media played a role as mediator between Republican attacks on Obama and a fair assessment of his presidential prerogatives.  At the very worst, they were quite simply in the can for Obama.  In the case of Trump, there was never a premise of neutral observer by the media and their partisan bias towards Trump has grown increasingly focused as his tenure has aged.  At the very worst, the media has simply served as an adjunct to the Democratic Party in an effort to compromise the Trump Administration in any way possible.  Here is an article from the Washington Post that makes this point; please note the date of the article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/20/the-campaign-to-impeach-president-trump-has-begun/ .

This differing role of the mainstream media in these two presidencies has resulted in two dramatically different results.  Whereas the Republican attacks on Obama were worrisome and annoying to his administration; Obama nonetheless survived two full terms bent but not bloodied.  Trump on the other hand has been under constant attacks that have limited his ability to perform the simplest of his duties without suffocating criticism and dissembling.  The same instances of Presidential envelope pushing; the same instances of Presidential abuse via executive order; the same instances of Presidential misstatements and hypocrisy have not been covered by the media in comparable fashion. 

The plain truth is that the Fourth Estate has placed its large thumb on the Democratic side of the scales and that is what has brought our nation to the precipice upon which we are now perched.  With the mainstream media taking a pass on objective surveillance, the Resist Trump minions have been emboldened and encouraged to take their disruption and sabotage to stratospheric levels.  If our news reporting and journalistic community does not soon sober up and rediscover a semblance of ethical and professional behavior; I suspect they will find that their current taskmasters, if successful, will eventually prove far more severe towards them than they expect.  They may rue the day when they sold their ethical soul and liberty due to an intense disenchantment with a disagreeable man.  Their current enablers may very well morph into their future controllers.

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Our bitterly partisan environment in WDC has created a situation where the two houses of Congress are largely impotent.  Neither can push legislation through without the promise of success from the other.  There is essentially no constructive discussion between the two parties.  The result is that nothing gets done.  No budget; no USMCA trade agreement; no national infrastructure bill; no immigration reform.  The frustration of both parties at being unable to deliver on policy initiatives has led many Republicans to focus their time and energies on irrational loyalty to an extremely flawed President and Democrats to launch inexplicable partisan attacks on a candidate who humiliated them at the polls.  With nothing of substance to occupy their time, our Senators and Representatives have devolved gloriously into a state of foolishness.

It is quite likely the case that regardless of how the Democratic impeachment effort plays out in the House, the absolute partisan chaos that is now pervasive in this country will only intensify as we approach the fall election of 2020.  The larger and more important question is: what happens after that?  If the Democrats win the White House and at least maintain control of the House, will they actually attempt to follow through with their campaign promises of dramatically shifting our culture and societal norms to the left?  Under this scenario, will the Senate Republicans engage in political guerilla warfare and use their majority to thwart every effort by the Democratic President just as the current House has treated Trump?  If Trump is reelected, having defied all odds and withstanding opposition at levels not yet witnessed in modern American history; will he feel totally unfettered by political restraints and push executive authority to new levels? Will the spite, malice and partisan venom that have become so ingrained in our populace and government abate with a new awareness of its excesses and insidious corrosion or will the poisonous political environment continue to escalate and spiral into a swirl of literal paralysis and open partisan conflict?   What will be the ultimate price that we pay as a nation for this political heresy that we have so joyfully engaged in?

The Republicans and the Democrats will tell us incessantly over the next twelve months that this election season is a battle for the future of our country…for our very way of life.  The question to be answered is far larger than that.  We have survived bad Presidents and foolish Legislators before.  We have been through foreign wars of aggression and internal wars of social change.  But if the degradation of our current political state continues as it appears likely to do, the very fabric of our country will be tested as never before.  In our response to that challenge, is it possibly less important exactly who we choose as our leaders and perhaps more important as to how we choose those leaders?