A More Perfect Union #4 Censure and Move On

A More Perfect Union 

#4 Censure and Move On

"Congress must Immediately Censure President Clinton and Move On to pressing issues facing the country."

This was the original call to action from the organization that is now known as Moveon.org. At the time of its launch, there were 20 sites for “Impeach Clinton”.  Scott Lauf's impeachclinton.org website had already delivered 60,000 petitions to Congress. Arianna Huffington, then a right-wing commentator, had collected 13,303 names on her website, resignation.com, which called on Clinton to resign. It was a different time. 

I am highlighting this little bit of history to illustrate my point that an “Impeach Trump” campaign is a colossally bad idea. Obviously, the Republicans did not take the advice of a newly formed left-wing political action committee, but they should have. 

The Clinton trial in the United States Senate began right after the seating of the 106th Congress, in which the Republican Party held 55 Senate seats. A two-thirds vote (67 senators) was required to remove Clinton from office. 50 senators voted to remove Clinton on the obstruction of justice charge and 45 voted to remove him on the perjury charge; no member of his own Democratic Party voted guilty on either charge. Clinton, like Andrew Johnson a century earlier, was acquitted on all charges. 

To be clear, no president has ever been convictedof the charges of “high crimes and misdemeanors” by the Senate. It has never happened.  

67 senators are needed to convict a sitting president. If pursued in the next 2 years, that would mean you would need ALL 47 democrats (Hi Joe Manchin!), both independents (Hi Angus!) and a minimum of 18 Republican senators to vote to convict the president and remove him from office. Yea, THAT’S going to happen. NOT! 

Which brings me to the original call to action that was made by Move On – Censure. Censure is “a formal, and public, group condemnation of an individual, often a group member, whose actions run counter to the group's acceptable standards for individual behavior”.

Like a reprimand, a censure does not remove a member from their office, so they retain their title, stature, and power to vote. There are also no legal consequences that come with a reprimand or censure. The main difference is that a reprimand is "considered a slap on the wrist and can be given in private and even in a letter", while a censure is "a form of public shaming in which the politician must stand before his peers to listen to the censure resolution".

In 1834, the Senate censured Democratic President Andrew Jackson for withholding documents relating to his actions in defunding the Bank of the United States. 

In 1842, Whigs attempted to impeach President John Tyler following a long period of hostility with the president. When that action could not get through Congress, a select Senate committee censured Tyler instead.

In 1848, the United States House of Representatives voted to censure President James K. Polk, on the grounds that the Mexican–American War had been "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States."

So, let’s talk about Trump and censure. The issue most in the news today are the payoffs to porn stars the president has been accused of. Impeachable offense? I don’t know, maybe. Would he be convicted and removed? Not a chance.

Clinton treated women poorly. Clinton lied. But if you didn’t know that he had slept with Jennifer Flowers after the 60 Minutes interview, you were not paying attention. Trump treats women poorly. If you didn’t know that after the Access Hollywood tape, you were not paying attention. Censure made sense for Clinton as well as for Trump.

I recommend that the House of Representatives censure Trump for the offence of “paying off porn stars to keep quiet about his affairs with them while running a presidential campaign which hid important information about his character from the voting public and was in violation of applicable laws”. 

And move on to pressing issues facing the country. 

If there has ever been a public figure who deserves to be subjected to "a form of public shaming in which the politician must stand before his peers”, it would be Donald Trump. 

If this action was taken, it could be done rather quickly after the Congress is sworn in. There would be a vote, a news story, copies of the censure would be printed in every paper in the land and Trump would have to face the consequences of his actions in the public square. And although I don’t want Congress to do this every month for the next 2 years, I suspect there will be other issues in which this will be appropriate. I am all for a censure for the violations of the emoluments clause when the court case reaches a place where conclusions may be inferred. And I’m sure Robert Mueller has a few censure worthy issues in his final report. 

Like Bob Dylan said: 

Even the President of the United States 

Sometimes must have to stand naked.