Donald Trump’s embattled presidency will take its toll – and not just on America
- The need to fend off a gathering movement at home to impeach him will no doubt distract the already easily sidetracked Trump from global matters, whether it is North Korean denuclearisation or a trade deal with China
Many opponents calculate that impeachment is the “killer app”. Perhaps – but the possibility of a boomerang backlash is barely considered.
The lower house of Congress can vote to send to the upper house its recommendation; but the current Senate, under Republican control, will be about as easy to get through as the Himalayas. The very process is full of peril; few really understand all that it entails.
Look back to 1868 – the impeachment target was President Andrew Johnson, and the writer of the following was the young Mark Twain: “The multitude of strangers were waiting for impeachment. They did not know what impeachment was, exactly, but they had a general idea that it would come in the form of an avalanche, or a thunder clap, or that maybe the roof would fall in.”
History records that the Senate push for conviction failed by one vote even as the House had approved the referral 126 to 47.
And so the world awaits as America tries to regain some balance. It’s hard to see how prolonged self-negation will prove healthy.
My foreign-policy seminar teachers in graduate school included Theodore Sorensen, president John F. Kennedy’s right-hand aide, who would emphasise the importance of intimate intellectual engagement by the president in all major foreign-policy questions, which, he would insist, wind up in the Oval Office and nowhere else.
An incumbent president who cannot focus on facing an opposition that will not relent in hatred is a formula for a comatose foreign policy.
Should such be our fate, Americans will have to readjust in dramatic ways. Its responsible media will need to broaden its foreign-policy visage beyond the usual government beats and be more inclusive of other points of energy, expertise and concern. Foreign leaders who offer peace rather than war need more time in the spotlight.
The need for humanitarian aid – food, medicine and massive paediatric assistance – is pressing. Fortunately, while official Washington fiddles in the swamp of impeachment, a non-official America hovers.
Outfits such as America’s National Committee on North Korea, the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability in Berkeley and other NGOs must keep their energy and efforts on high. Now is not the time to let despair get to the best of us.
Should the Chinese government simply try to wait this all out? Were such passivity feasible, it might be advisable. But history never goes to sleep. It’s fair to complain that the vituperative Trump tariff thrust sprayed too many economic bullets in too many places.
Large institutions – whether a massive country or a venerable religious institution – can benefit from reform and renewal. So long as the current insanity ends soon, the global economy overall might just benefit from the self-examination. China is that consequential, to be sure.
Columnist and university professor Tom Plate is vice-president of the Pacific Century Institute, a trans-Pacific non-profit with special focus on the future of the Korean peninsula, and an alliance partner with Loyola Marymount University’s Asia Media International