The recently concluded Trump impeachment had no upsides and many downsides. It proved to be counterproductive at the end of the day. Trump avoided any accountability for his misbehavior regarding Ukraine and, unsurprisingly, claimed total “vindication” by his acquittal. It apparently benefited him politically judging from his rising poll numbers since the impeachment began. It certainly seems to have emboldened him. The impeachment and its aftermath intensified the visceral contempt for each other among the combatants. Witness the infantile conduct of Trump and Speaker Pelosi at this year’s State of the Union address. It provided yet another example of Washington’s partisan dysfunction and added to the polarization and pervasive cynicism that infect our national politics.
It didn’t have to be this way. From start to finish, the most reasonable take on the impeachment case was that Trump’s behavior was seriously inappropriate but not sufficiently egregious to justify the ultimate sanction of removal from office. The Democrats’ impeachment project was politically motivated overreach based on ambiguous and incomplete facts as well as dubious legal theories. It never had a chance to succeed. However, there’s a good chance that censuring Trump rather than impeaching him could have achieved significant bipartisan support and succeeded. It certainly would have been much harder for Republicans to vote against censure than impeachment.
A concurrent resolution of Congress to censure Trump was the best option. Concurrent resolutions require only a simple majority to pass in each chamber and are not subject to veto. Such a resolution probably would have picked up some Republican votes in the House and attracted at least the four Republican votes needed to pass the Senate. While carrying no legal consequences, a bipartisan, bicameral condemnation of Trump would have denied him any basis to claim validation of his conduct. While we’ll never know, it might even have chastened Trump to some degree. What we do know is that the failed impeachment had the opposite effect.