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1. If you think that politics is solely about “winning,” then impeachment looks like just another card to be played. But the founders—who were remarkably clear-eyed about human frailty—thought otherwise.
2. "The Founders worried about electing a president who lacked character or a sense of honor, but Americans have long since lost the moral vocabulary to articulate such concerns explicitly…"
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
3. Periodically, the president’s public statements reveal he has encountered a process he is unequipped to grasp—as when he runs into a civil servant, for example, who adheres to the logic of duty rather than personal loyalty or private advantage.
4. He has said, in recent weeks, that impeachment requires “high crimes AND misdemeanors”; that the courts can block it; that it cannot be “legally used.” He insists that it is an illegitimate means of nullifying elections.
5. The problem, for the president, is that the impeachment power resides in a body he cannot control, and proceeds by a logic he appears not to grasp. We will hear more strident and wild objections in the days to come, and they will not alter this. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
