Impeachment hearings – revenge of the nerds
Wednesday began, oddly enough, with the news that Rod Stewart has built a model railway in the attic of his home in Los Angeles. Hilarity ensued as the media piled on top of what seems like a nerdy thing for a rock star to do. Yet it was more than that. It was a reminder that beyond the fame, the celebrity, the riches, there are things in this world that are more tangible and rewarding. Think of Marlon Brando who spent his career demeaning the profession of acting only to find satisfaction in the world of ham radio.
George Kent is no Brando, though given the most famous attempt to impeach a president was Watergate, it seemed fitting that the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs does resemble Hal Holbrook who played “Deep Throat” in the film adaptation of Watergate’s most famous book. Kent walked into the committee room on Wednesday wearing a bow tie and a suit complete with waistcoat and a breast pocket handkerchief. He looked out of place in a room dominated by the rigid TV suits that characterise American politics. Here was a man markedly different and easy for an audience to read. It suddenly made sense that the impeachment process is now going public. We would have faces to attach to facts, archetypes to associate with a story. Here, it seemed to say, is a real expert on Eastern Europe and he even wears a bow tie.
Next to him sat Ambassador William Taylor who would provide the gravitas. America’s news networks had made much of his not-quite Geoffrey Robinson levels of baritone, but they were right. When he spoke, people listened. This wasn’t going to be the underwhelming performance that characterised the last days of the Mueller Report. Say what you like about the Special Counsel’s service to his country but Robert Mueller’s performance on the Hill had given the nation a collective nap. Chair of the committee, Adam Schiff, was right to start with these two men. Between them, Taylor and Kent were to provide a health tonic to the sugar-rush of this presidency. Their testimony wasn’t thick with the dumb labels that have come to define the debate. There would be no “fake news” and “corrupt media”. There was none of the “bullshit”, “bastard” and “son of bitch” that has come to define presidential language in recent weeks. These were intelligent men, offering sharp responses and precise meanings. Dates flowed as easily as the geopolitics.
It was beyond impressive. It was affirming. The overriding sense one had was to thank God these people are on our side. They are the serious people who staff the Foreign Office in London and the State Department in Washington and, if our countries are great, it’s not because Rod Stewart has slept with a googolplex of women or that Marlon Brando made a million for however many tortured seconds he endured in Superman The Movie. It’s because Stewart makes model railways and Brandon lived a second life as an inventor and amateur radio enthusiast. It’s because men like George Kent understand why it’s in American’s national interest to aid Ukraine and can explain why America is leaning into Russia on the Ukraine border.
Given all the talk of headcounts in the Senate and a Republican party hostage to Trump, it’s too easy to think this impeachment is merely about the game of politics. Watergate was a domestic incident that was largely confined to the political sphere. There were the famous dark arts, the so-called “ratfucking”, which amounted to juvenile pranks straight out of fraternity culture. Yet there was nothing truly malicious in what they did. Nixon retained enough honour at the end to walk away and spare his nation the prolonged scandal. Even the Clinton impeachment was about bodily juices in the Oval Office. He lied, it’s true, but arguably for the same reasons that many people who commit marital infidelities find reason to lie. Wednesday provided a stark reminder of why the Ukraine scandal is different. Taylor explained why it’s in the national interest to support Ukraine’s fight against the Russian Bear and why America’s president is putting lives at risk in pursuit of his own political ambitions.
Although there’s no way of knowing the on-the-ground effect of the delay, aid withheld is a struggle intensified. Taylor talked movingly about being on the front lines where brave Ukrainians thanked him for aid he knew had just been suspended on the President’s orders. Is there blood on Donald Trump’s hands? Taylor didn’t go so far as to say that simply because he couldn’t correlate deaths to delay. But the meaning was clear. Donald Trump was playing games with the lives of real people.
Much of the rest we already knew, though a few new facts did emerge. Taylor reported for the first time that one of his staffers had overheard Trump’s phone call with Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland. That staffer will now appear before the committee on Friday. For the most part, however, the five hours of testimony amounted to a study in dedication. Taylor grabbed the headlines but it was George Kent who left a lasting impression. Here was a true representative of the “Deep State”, that moronic phrase which was exposed here as being utterly crass if it means the men and women who devote their lives to learning, analysis, and service to a country. Kent spoke with the quiet confidence of a man who understands his brief. He contextualised everything. Spoke precisely about dates and percentages. It was hard not to be reminded of a better era of political analysis. There was about him something of the late William F. Buckley.
The Republican response was surprising in that it offered no meaningful defence. Devin Nunes again attempted to make the story about the Whistleblower but he was, as usual, projecting a fixation of the President.
You don’t need to question the forecaster who predicted winter when you’re up to your ears in snow. Yet here the Republicans were, seeking anything that could distract the American people from the damning testimony of the key players.
In the end, the Republican’s counsel, Steve Castor, had the impossible task of shaping an articulate response to a hopeless case. There was no shame in failing. Instead, the screaming was left to Jim Jordan, added to the committee at the last minute in order to provide some of that shirt-sleeved-Jimmy-Stewart-goes-to-Washington-and-turns-bad energy, but his ineffective performance only highlighted the disparity between the two worlds. Out in social media land, Eric Trump tweeted “snoozefest” like the jock he and so many of these chancers surely are. Next, he’ll be kicking somebody’s books over and doing that “wet willy” thing where he sticks his finger in their ear because, on the evidence here, the Republicans have no defence. They repeatedly ticked off their talking points…
They said Ukrainian politics is mired in corruption. Well, yes it is.
They said the American government has the right to insist on Ukraine cleaning up its act. Indeed they do.
They asked if the President has a responsibility to do that in conversation with Ukraine’s leaders. “Yes” came the reply.
Getting witnesses to repeatedly say “yes” looks good for the TV cameras but that’s as far as it goes. Republicans never addressed the principal charge that the President has undermined American national security in order to cheat his way to re-election. By blackmailing desperate people threatened by Russia (more than 14,000 have already lost their lives), Trump had proved that he “cares more about the investigations of Biden” (the words of Ambassador Sondland, reported by Taylor).
It now looks certain, then, that Trump will be impeached by the House but that does not mean he’ll be forced from office by the Senate, where 67 votes will still be needed to find him guilty. But Trump’s failure can (and will) be measured by degrees. If he is not cleared by the House (unlikely), he will become only the third president to be impeached in America’s history, after Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. That would be mitigated somewhat if he was cleared by a majority in the Republican-dominated Senate. That’s more likely but it would take only a few Republicans to switch. The sensible money would be on him being found guilty by a majority in the Senate, which would be utterly damning, but not enough of a majority to remove him from office.
It would then become a matter for electors in November and the cold eyes of history going forward. Listening to Kent and Taylor, knowing what comes next and what was also contained in the Mueller Report, it’s hard not to see Trump as simply the most corrupt individual to occupy the White House. Wednesday was damning for it revealed a culture in which men like Trump can achieve the highest positions in the land and men like Taylor and Kent are destined for mid-level… Well, “mediocrity” isn’t the right word. There’s nothing mediocre about either man but that’s the point. Rod Stewart’s model railway might be the best thing he’s ever done. It reflects poorly on us, rather than him, that he felt it necessary to hide it away in his attic.