The pathetic impeachment pandering of North Carolina’s senators
The impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate may go on even longer and witnesses may be called, but the outcome is still all but certain: President Trump will be acquitted. That certainly has nothing do with Trump’s guilt. It has to do with the supplication of Republican senators. They’ve put their party before their country and their party is now the Party of Trump.
Despite that reality, it’s still hard to witness the pathetic pandering to the president by North Carolina’s two Republican U.S. senators. Rather than retreating into the background and quietly casting a vote in keeping with Republican solidarity, they are proudly rejecting their role as a crucial check on the excesses of a rogue president.
Before the Senate trial even began, the state’s junior senator, Thom Tillis, said he was a “definite no” on Trump’s removal. He has dismissed the second count of impeachment – Trump’s obstruction of Congress. As for the first count — the president’s abuse of power in leveraging military aid in an attempt to trigger a foreign investigation of a political rival — Tillis said it’s not worth Trump’s removal, no matter what former national security adviser John Bolton says.
That’s no surprise. The one-term senator is up for re-election and is pledging absolute fealty to the president in the hope that Trump’s appeal can carry him to victory. Allowing no daylight between his positions and Trump’s is Tillis’ only calculation, his only concern and his only ambition.
The behavior of Sen. Richard Burr, however, sinks to a new level of disservice. Speaking Tuesday morning on former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory’s radio show, Burr channeled the widely dismissed opinion of Trump’s legal defender, attorney Alan Dershowitz. That opinion is that no president can be impeached unless he is charged with a crime. Dershowitz says using the power of the presidency to force an embattled foreign country to open an investigation of a political rival doesn’t merit removal.
Said Burr: “I think Alan Dershowitz said it very well last night, ‘You blew it, House managers.’ The articles you’ve brought don’t rise to the level of removal from office. So you may have impeached the president. Great. But they don’t rise to the level of removal. And if the Senate did it, then look out in the future — every president will go through this.”
This from a senator who as a House member voted to impeach President Bill Clinton for lying about an extramarital affair. Burr said then: “The United States is a nation of laws, not men. And I do not believe we can ignore the facts or disregard the Constitution so that the president can be placed above the law.”
Burr’s hypocrisy would be a standard partisan turnaround, except that he’s not a standard senator. He’s chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. For more than a year he has received top-secret briefings on how Russians tried to sway the 2016 election in Trump’s favor. He knows more than most senators how vulnerable the nation’s elections are. Yet he is cavalier about an effort from within the Oval Office to invite foreign interference in the 2020 election.
North Carolinians who blindly support the president will welcome their senators doing the same. But senators shouldn’t be merely partisan players. They represent an entire state. Polls indicate that North Carolina voters are split on impeachment, but the many North Carolinians who think the president has done a great disservice to his office and violated his oath are not having their concerns reflected or even acknowledged by their senators.
Tillis and Burr can’t be expected to vote to remove the president. But personal integrity and a respect for all those they represent requires that they be open to the evidence and perhaps even admit discomfort with the president’s actions.
Tillis and Burr, especially, have failed to meet that requirement. They will acquit the president. They cannot acquit themselves.
This story was originally published January 29, 2020 at 3:36 PM with the headline "The pathetic impeachment pandering of North Carolina’s senators."