Impeachment: What this means, where this leads

Harvard experts ponder some of the toughest questions in play for the presidency, Congress, public

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Many presidents have made foreign policy decisions that others found politically disagreeable, even morally objectionable. Isn’t it a president’s prerogative to be able to follow his or her own personal moral compass while in office, even if those decisions break sharply with decades of U.S. policy?

Joseph S. Nye Jr., Ph.D. ’64
Author of “Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump” (2020)
Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School

In the role of commander in chief, presidents have a lot of leeway in foreign policy, but it is not unlimited. As Edward Corwin once wrote, the Constitution creates “an invitation to struggle” for control of foreign policy. President Trump had the right to define the American national interest in Ukraine as corruption rather than defense against Russia, but when he withheld, without explanation, funds that Congress had appropriated for the latter cause, Congress had the right to investigate, and Trump did not have the right to obstruct Congress.

President Trump also had the right to ask President [Volodymyr] Zelensky for a favor, but not one for personal gain that involved foreign involvement in our elections (which the Founders warned against). Corruption is the abuse of public power for personal gain, and that high immorality was at issue when Trump invited Zelensky to announce an investigation of a principal likely opponent in the 2020 election.

Are we witnessing a chapter in the slow death of the American democratic experiment?

Daniel Ziblatt
Co-author of “How Democracies Die” (2018)
Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, Harvard University

The impeachment process has shown that President Trump’s instinct for the abuse of power is dangerous and reminiscent of autocrats’ in other places and times. But American democracy is not yet dying. Instead, it has been stricken by a debilitating disease that has made it increasingly frail since at least the 1990s: a polarizing illiberal right-wing radicalism. The system’s antibodies — the courts, journalists, and voters — are fighting back. And the election of 2020 may prove to be a miracle drug.

But at the end of the day, democracy’s fate hinges neither on impeachment nor on elections alone, but instead on whether the Republican Party responds over time by recommitting itself to the rule of law and basic democratic norms. We sometimes forget this simple fact: To survive, democracy requires at least two democratic political parties. We currently only have one. If this doesn’t change, our growing democratic disorder risks mutating into an even more extreme form.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/12/harvard-analysts-probe-what-impeachment-means-where-it-leads/