What's Your Function?

Nothing really sharpens one's appreciation for civics like a good ole-fashioned constitutional crisis.

Nixon resigned both before he could be properly impeached and when I was about two months old, so I confess I didn't pay nearly as much attention to the process then as I maybe could have. At that age a boy has little room in his underdeveloped mind for any subject outside of breasts, sleeping and explosive gastrointestinal processing. But that ultimately wears off by the age of... um...

When Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998, not only was I old enough to know what was going on, I was, like, a voter and everything. I turned 18 in 1992, so that was my first election, the first Clinton one. Right there at the dawn of my political awakening, there Billy Jeff Clinton was, instilling in me the fundamental political principles that drive me. To this day, the first things I look for in a candidate to support are outward displays of human empathy, the ability to articulate a complex socio-political vision and saxophone proficiency. All things being equal, deep down I know I want me a dick-slangin' intern-bangin' former-evil-empire-defangin' man of fiery middle-of-the-road pragmatism at the podium giving us all the tiny nonthreatening thumb gesture of pure reassurance.

So unlike '74, in '98 I was all the way plugged in to the process. Hey, did you know you could be successfully impeached but not have to leave office? Turns out that's true! There are whole sections about it in the Constitution! The actual one, not just the parts we remember from Schoolhouse Rock. The same way every four years in an Olympic cycle I become conversant in the mechanics of a proper platform dive ("Oh, over-rotation, too much splash... The form on the tuck was OK, but she just couldn't rip the entry..."), I became a Constitutional legal scholar on Article Two, Section Four. Those bums on the Republican side were coming for MY president. Like a few paltry acts of spectacularly indefensible personal judgment were enough to consider disqualifying a person from executive office. Today it sounds laughably quaint.

Sure, there's been impeachment talk since before the inauguration of the current stupid president and all his stupid advisors, but the latest outrage is that on top of threats of nuclear war and an open disdain for American citizens bludgeoned by natural disasters, now the Trump administration is forcing me to try to figure out what the fuck is up with the 25th Amendment. Like, just because he's going batshit, which we all knew he would, now I have homework? One more indignity on the pile, I guess.

Apparently the amendment was passed after Kennedy was shot by Tommy Lee Jones or whoever so that if the president was left in an incapacitated state, the Cabinet (without the interference of Congress) could decide by an internal vote to remove the president from office. The idea seems to have been born out of the possible outcome of a president being shot but not immediately dying or like Woodrow Wilson having himself a stroke, leaving his wife to be president because nobody could figure out what the fuck else to do.

Now the idea is being floated that Mike Pence and all the angry generals Trump was so excited about hanging out with he gave them civilian jobs in the executive branch, could join together and vote Trump out of office; not because he's had a stroke or anything but just because he's a giant fucking baby on year 70 of a sustained temper tantrum. Basically there are no boxes to check on the 25th Amendment, so the plan would be to invent one that says "Emotional and Intellectual Capacity of a 9-year-old (with apologies to actual 9-year-olds)," check the box they just drew and then trundle him off back to his Bond villain lair in NYC.

I don't really have a problem imagining a post-Trump United States. But this strikes me mostly as mad liberal fantasy. I think one of the worst thing lefties fear is winning the House and Senate back in 2018. Certainly a case could be made for impeachment on the Russia stuff alone, but in a Democrat Congress, now it looks like a political coup akin to 1998 (especially after the debacle of the 2016 election) for partisan reasons, something the GOP can run elections on indefinitely into the future. Especially if they swing and miss and President Cantaloupe gets to stay. But if the Cabinet turns on him, well, look, it's not only Republicans who did it, it was his closest guys! And whom do we call to sweep in a clean up this mess, and who happens to be holding a mandate for single-payer health care and other exciting ideas for immediate veto by President Michael Pence? Hey, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer... yay?