The Inquiry’s Ominous Verdict | Talking Points Memo

This is a deeply disturbing essay.
All of this means that the United States is in a grave crisis, like an automobile running at high speed and out of control. It will remain that way for at least a year and as long as five more years. And the opposition’s ability to put a brake on his power is thin.
The Inquiry’s Ominous Verdict | Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall

Any effort by a President to use the vast presidential power to advance her personal interests is immediately illegitimate and an abuse of power. It is a direct attack on the constitutional order. This is why foreign subsidies, bribes, emoluments are so damaging to the country: not so much because it’s not fair that a President should get rich off the office but because foreign policy is itself corrupted. It can’t operate in the national interest because some foreign entity is paying the President to do something different than the national interest. Otherwise they wouldn’t be paying.

But all of this pales in comparison to what happens when a President uses his power to sabotage an election. That pushes the whole system into crisis. Because the legitimacy of the President’s power rests on the people’s ability to revoke it in a subsequent election. An American President has vast powers. She has vast power to act in secret. Unleash those powers against the integrity of a US election and the legitimacy of the entire system is short-circuited. It amounts to the President using powers granted to advance the national interest to make his or her power permanent or beyond the people’s ability to take back, a situation which is grave and intolerable.

3. Those who tolerate if not support the President argue that these points above can be tolerated because the President is surrounded by appointees and advisors who serve as guardrails around his behavior. Indeed, something quite like this seems to have happened precisely with respect to policy toward Russia and Ukraine. The administration has adopted a reasonably hawkish policy of support for Ukraine despite the fact that the President himself has a deep affinity for President Putin and an intense animus toward Ukraine.

But what this story has told us more than anything else is that these “guardrails” do not work or even exist. The testimony of Fiona Hill is a case in point. She is committed, smart and professional. Like many others she knew this was wrong and said it was wrong. And yet it happened precisely on her watch. As it did on George Kent’s and Bill Taylor’s and John Bolton’s and numerous others. This point is absolutely critical. Even with all these people, this plot would never have become known and it almost certainly would have succeeded if not for the whistleblower, who appears to be a relatively junior official at the CIA. My point is not to criticize these people, only to show their presence has been insufficient. Now an entire political party is uniting behind the position that these actions are legitimate and laudable. On every front the national law enforcement apparatus has been coopted toward protecting the President and scrutinizing his critics.

4. This confluence of facts makes it all but certain that this present scandal is only one of many and that most we have yet to learn about. ....