In his latest Washington Post column George Will has unleached his waggish side:
Today’s impeachment has had benefits and will have more. Attentive Americans already have learned much about the difficulty and potential perils of lassoing a runaway president with a lariat woven of concepts such as “abuse of power†(which presidents were innocent?) and “obstruction of Congress†(how defined, and by whom?). Soon Americans will learn much, not about the president — he is an open comic book who has read himself to the country for years — but about senators, a slew of whom aspire to be his successor.
Intelligent, informed, public-spirited Republican senators can conclude that, because the United States is riven by recriminations hurled by irreconcilable factions and because institutions are indiscriminately distrusted, it is imprudent to remove the president 10 months before voters can neuter him. Or such senators can decide that this president’s deeds, regarding Ukraine and in frustrating congressional investigation thereof, are execrable but insufficient to justify truncating a presidential term that is almost 75 percent over.
Or blinkered Republican senators can affirm the president’s self-assessment as perfect yet persecuted. And incandescent Democratic senators can demand his removal — due process and valuable norms be damned — because he threatens due processes of law and valuable norms.
Senators must now risk indecent exposure of their minds. In 10 months, voters will decide what to do about the president’s malignant frivolousness.
Mr. Will knows quite well that there are no “intelligent, informed, public-spirited” senators, Republican or Democratic. What we actually have are pompous, self-interested partisans, presidents-in-waiting in their own minds. That has been insured by the rise of political parties, the popular election of the Senate, and the imperial presidency. Indecent exposure, indeed.
