Short Shelf-Life for Senator Ben Sasse's "Open Letter" to Nebraskans on February 4th

          Time moves fast in our modern news cycle. It moves even faster in Trump Time, as we lurch from Tweet to Tweet. President Trump is not intelligent: he knows next-to-nothing about American history, he regularly makes a cartoonish mess of scientific fact,  but he is clever. He is clever in the way someone trying to sell you junk products is clever, or clever in the way an old-time carnival barker is clever. He is constantly diverting attention, constantly changing the subject, constantly forcing the on-lookers to consider a new claim. This constant barrage of new wild claims leaves the aghast subject of the spectacle little quality time to contemplate what is actually going on. Sometimes, even intelligent people get caught up in the circus.

          If we are charitable to Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, let's say that is what happened. The otherwise highly intelligent Senator got caught up in the spectacle of Rudy Giuliani openly shredding official American diplomacy in Ukraine, so that Rudy and his band of B-movie heavies could get one Ambassador fired (we still do not know if Rudy's thugs planned to inflict physical violence on Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch) and another made ineffective (Ambassador William Taylor finally just retired in disgust). The problem, of course, is that Ben Sasse, in his "Open Letter" to his constituents took it a step further.

          If you did not get a chance to read the Senator's open letter in the Omaha World Herald on February 4th (11 days ago!) I link it here and copy it below. https://www.omaha.com/opinion/midlands-voices-open-letter-from-ben-sasse-presents-his-take/article_fc051711-967c-5551-a8eb-de6d3be64cbc.html.  In this open letter, Sasse claims that President Trump himself was taken in by Rudy Giuliani. This is quite an entertaining assertion. I wonder how long the Senator believed his telling of this story would last.

         Senator Ben Sasse is an Ivy League scholar and the author of bestselling books that assert that an entire generation of Americans didn't do a good job raising their kids, and that these kids, the "millennial" generation, ended up being irresponsible and unaccountable adults because of our poor parenting skills. In his open letter, though, this same Ben Sasse wants us to believe that a 73-year old president cannot be held accountable for his abuse of power because he listened to bad advisers.

                    In Ben Sasse's telling, Rudy Giuliani is a Svengali-like character, a deceiver who somehow convinced President Trump to ask Ukraine's president to investigate Joe Biden, using U.S. security assistance as a tool of extortion. In the nick of time, however, honest public servants like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came to the rescue: the blinders were removed from the president's eyes, and he released the military aid to Ukraine.

          There is, of course, a more rational explanation than this fanciful tale. That is that like Michael Cohen, Jay Goldberg, and many lawyers before them, Mr. Giuliani was acting as Donald Trump's fixer, or "consigliere," to use the organized crime parlance. That is, rather than leading Donald Trump astray, Giuliani was doing exactly what he knew Trump wanted him to do. In doing so, Giuliani essentially gutted official foreign policy in Ukraine, in favor of what John Bolton called "a drug deal."

          Beyond the open abuse of power, there is other damage. Ukraine joins a long list of erstwhile allies who now know that the United States cannot be trusted. Our NATO allies, South Korea, and the Kurds have all learned this lesson. With President Trump, our foreign policy resembles a protection racket, with a strong tinge of self-interest intertwined.

          Again, how long did Senator Ben Sasse expect his story of "Rudy Giuliani as Evil Wizard" narrative would hold water? The answer is about one week. This is quoted and cited from CNN, linked here, complete with President Trump's own words on a podcast.  https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/politics/trump-rudy-giuliani-ukraine-interview/index.html.

          The reversal came Thursday [February 13th] in a podcast interview Trump did with journalist Geraldo Rivera, who asked, "Was it strange to send Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine, your personal lawyer? Are you sorry you did that?" Trump responded, "No, not at all," and praised Giuliani's role as a "crime fighter." 

          "Here's my choice: I deal with the Comeys of the world, or I deal with Rudy," Trump said, referring to former FBI Director James Comey. Trump explained that he has "a very bad taste" of the US intelligence community, because of the Russia investigation, so he turned to Giuliani.

          "So when you tell me, why did I use Rudy, and one of the things about Rudy, number one, he was the best prosecutor, you know, one of the best prosecutors, and the best mayor," Trump said. "But also, other presidents had them. FDR had a lawyer who was practically, you know, was totally involved with government. Eisenhower had a lawyer. They all had lawyers."

          Ben Sasse will probably get away, for now, with using his tortured logic to acquit this president, an adult who needs to be held accountable for his own actions. However, I suspect that the witness of history will not be kind to Senator Sasse, nor the other Republicans who are knowingly excusing President Trump's actions.

Attachment: The Senator Ben Sasse Open Letter, published in the Omaha World Herald on February 4, 2020.

          Impeachment is serious. It’s the “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” provision of the Constitution.  I plan to vote against removing the president, and I write to explain this decision to the Nebraskans on both sides who have advocated so passionately.

          An impeachment trial requires senators to carry out two responsibilities: We’re jurors sworn to “do impartial justice.” We’re also elected officeholders responsible for promoting the civic welfare of the country. We must consider both the facts before us, and the long-term effects of the verdict rendered. I believe removal is the wrong decision.

          Let’s start with the facts of the case. It’s clear that the president had mixed motives in his decision to temporarily withhold military aid from Ukraine. The line between personal and public was not firmly safeguarded. But it is important to understand, whether one agrees with him or not, three things President Trump believes:

          » He believes foreign aid is almost always a bad deal for America. I don’t believe this, but he has maintained this position consistently since the 1980s.

          » He believes the American people need to know the 2016 election was legitimate, and he believes it’s dangerous if they worry Russia picked America’s president. About this, he’s right.

          

          » He believes the Crowdstrike theory of 2016, that Ukraine conducted significant meddling in our election. I don’t believe this theory, but the president has heard it repeatedly from people he trusts, chiefly Rudy Giuliani, and he believes it.

          These beliefs have consequences. When the president spoke to Ukraine’s president Zelensky in July 2019, he seems to have believed he was doing something that was simultaneously good for America, and good for himself politically — namely, reinforcing the legitimacy of his 2016 victory. It is worth remembering that that phone call occurred just days after Robert Mueller’s two-year investigation into the 2016 election concluded that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”

          This is not a blanket excuse, of course. Some of the president’s lawyers have admitted that the way the administration conducted policymaking toward Ukraine was wrong. I agree. The call with Zelensky was certainly not “perfect,” and the president’s defense was made weaker by staking out that unrepentant position.

          Moreover, Giuliani’s off-the-books foreign policy-making is unacceptable, and his role in walking the president into this airplane propeller is underappreciated: His Crowdstrike theory was a bonkers attempt not only to validate Trump’s 2016 election, and to flip the media’s narrative of Russian interference, but also to embarrass a possible opponent. One certainty from this episode is that America’s Mayor shouldn’t be any president’s lawyer. It’s time for the president and adults on his team to usher Rudy off the stage — and to ensure that we do not normalize rogue foreign policy conducted by political operatives with murky financial interests.

          There is no need to hear from any 18th impeachment witness, beyond the 17 whose testimony the Senate reviewed, to confirm facts we already know. Even if one concedes that John Bolton’s entire testimony would support Adam Schiff’s argument, this doesn’t add to the reality already established: The aid delay was wrong.

          But in the end, the president wasn’t seduced by the most malign voices; his honest advisers made sure Ukraine got the aid the law required. And importantly, this happened three weeks before the legal deadline. To repeat: The president’s official staff repeatedly prevailed upon him, Ukraine ultimately got the money, and no political investigation was initiated or announced.

          You don’t remove a president for initially listening to bad advisors but eventually taking counsel from better advisors — which is precisely what happened here.

          There is another prudential question, though, beyond the facts of the case: What is the right thing for the long-term civic health of our country? Will America be more stable in 2030 if the Senate — nine months from Election Day 2020 — removes the president?

          In our Constitution’s 232 years, no president has ever been removed from office by the Senate. Today’s debate comes at a time when our institutions of self-government are suffering a profound crisis of legitimacy, on both sides of the aisle. This is not a new crisis since 2016; its sources run much deeper and longer.

          We need to shore up trust. A reckless removal would do the opposite, setting the nation on fire. Half of the citizenry — tens of millions who intended to elect a disruptive outsider — would conclude that D.C. insiders overruled their vote, overturned an election and struck their preferred candidate from the ballot.

          This one-party removal attempt leaves America more bitterly divided. It makes it more likely that impeachment, intended as a tool of last resort for the most serious presidential crimes, becomes just another bludgeon in the bag of tricks for the party out of power. And more Americans will conclude that constitutional self-government today is nothing more than partisan bloodsport.

          We must do better. Our kids deserve better. Most of the restoration and healing will happen far from Washington, of course. But this week, senators have an important role: Get out of the way, and allow the American people to render their verdict on election day.