JOIN USPrinciple over pragmatism
As the days go by, it is becoming increasingly clear that Trump’s second impeachment has much greater significance for a constitutional democracy than the first. The possible failure in the Senate, which would be unfortunate, should not, however, detract from the significance of what has been achieved. While the first impeachment was a censure and heralded the end of any remaining bipartisanship, since the Republican-controlled Senate stood solidly behind Trump, the second showed that the fortress had been breached when 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives placed constitutional morality above party loyalty and voted for impeachment. But the tensions of American democracy are not what I wish to talk about here. Will the Grand Old Party fracture, will they dump Trump, will there be civil unrest, will the courts stop being neutral, are all interesting questions, but here I want to stand apart from the dynamics of American politics and draw important lessons for the politics of all democracies. A sort of Bhishma’s discourse.
The second impeachment should be seen as a fine example of that perennial struggle of politics: the principled stand versus the pragmatic calculus. Should Arjuna have shot an arrow at Karna when he had dismounted the chariot and put down his weapons to lift the wheel from the wet mud? He certainly should not have. It was against the rules of war, which all had agreed upon. But Arjuna did so because he needed to win the war. Pragmatism triumphed.
With Trump’s tenure nearly at an end when the January 6 insurrection occurred, many such pragmatic arguments were voiced. Why impeach Trump now and make him a martyr? Why give him grounds to rally his base? When the Democrats have won everything -- the Presidency, the Senate and the House -- why proceed with an impeachment when Trump has no capacity to cause damage to the polity? Why give him an opportunity to shift the political discourse from his incitement of the mob to attack the Capitol to the control of the Democrats by Lefties whose agenda is to make America socialist?
Such pragmatic reasoning did not cut much ice with Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House. For her, a contrary statement was needed. This was, for her, the moment in history when one was called upon to assert one’s commitment to the principles of a constitutional democracy. Especially when it had been “defiled and defaced” (to use Nani Palkhivala’s phrase) by one sworn to protect it. If constitutional misdemeanours by holders of high office are ignored on pragmatic grounds, such as giving a go-by to the doctrine of co-equal branches of government, then such a democracy has entered the slippery road to tyranny.
For Pelosi, and I agree with her, leaders who belittle their oath, and they could be politicians, judges, civil servants, police commissioners, etc., must be admonished. Most leaders disregard the Constitution because they have become habituated to a pragmatic calculus. They do not even see that they have a choice. Mahatma Gandhi saw it, as did Mandela. The darbar in Delhi does not.
Another important lesson from the second impeachment is that institutions can stop the slide into tyranny. They have only to perform what they are mandated to do. A Governor should not sign an ordinance in the middle of the night. A President must delay a bill sent to him for assent if he is concerned about its constitutionality. Or seek Supreme Court advice on it. He must not become a rubber stamp, like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed became in 1975. A CAG must subject government spending to the strictest scrutiny. A police commissioner must not turn his force into a paramilitary wing of the ruling dispensation and arrest students in libraries and those innocently walking around JNU. Indira Gandhi did that during Emergency. On flawed intelligence, she picked up students at JNU and threw them into jail. Although Stan Swamy languishes in jail, and Arnab Goswami gets an urgent hearing in the Supreme Court, let’s hope such Emergency politics does not return.
The second impeachment seeks to arrest this slide into institutional flaccidity because complicity with tyranny makes institutions irrelevant. The unprecedented letter signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, eight of them, to the combined armed forces under their command, condemning the violence in the Capitol as ‘sedition’ and ‘insurrection’, was such an affirmation of duty. The second lesson from the second impeachment is clear: do what the institution mandates you to do. Do not fudge. Do not prevaricate.
The third lesson from the second impeachment is that it will make the bigots and hate mobs, the lynchers (if you wish) worried. The rise of such hate politics, of demonising the other, was on the rise in the US and it needed to be stopped. The horrific attack on an African American woman passing a crowd of White supremacists in downtown Los Angeles who had come out in support of Trump is illustrative of this culture of lynching that Trump was normalising. It had to be stopped. Berlinda Nido had her new wig torn from her head by a white female protester, who then announced to her buddies that this was the ‘first scalp’ of the new civil war. Imagine her proudly announcing her act of humiliating another as an act of triumph with language like that. Such a vocabulary of hate and politics of humiliation has no place in a democratic society. The second impeachment signals the beginning of the end of such collusion with bigotry. It promises a return to the politics of decency. All democracies must signal the same.
(The writer is the DD Kosambi Visiting Professor at Goa University)