Our new family room couch – complete with dual reclining sections – arrives in a couple of days. That means the coffee table needed to go.
Now, they built that table before pressed wood products. (We got it in the 1980’s.) From moving it to vacuum and such I realized it how substantial it is. Still, I figured how hard could it be to move one table from the basement to the garage.
Pretty damn hard, actually.
Then it dawned on me that I had never actually carried that table: two guys delivered it to our townhome, then two friends carried it into the family room when we moved. And, my friends carried it downhill.
The newest soap opera on daytime TV tells the story of an arrogant President contemptuous of law and tradition, determined to use the vast power of the federal government as his blunt instrument.
The good news: presidential impeachments are rare. Even in modern times they occur just once every few decades.
The bad news: each impeachment proceeding finds itself re-inventing the process and determining what constitutes impeachable offenses.
In 1973 and 1974, for example, impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon stressed not the violation of law but the abuse of presidential power. Over the objection of most Republican House members, the resolution advanced – causing Nixon to pull his ripcord.
At the end of the 1990’s Republicans in Congress impeached Bill Clinton on two criminal counts, lying to a grand jury and obstructing justice. Clinton, of course, like Andrew Johnson, beat the rap in the Senate.
This impeachment season Democrats in the House of Representatives are concentrating on abuse of power resulting in criminal activities by President Donald J. Trump. While the script is still being written, handwriting on the wall points to a party-line vote to impeach the president and force a Senate trial for removal from office.
Of course, the latest presidential impeachment occurs in a different world than the previous three. Multiple 24/7 cable news services compete for viewers, sometimes using facts, often opinion. While Rachel Maddow on MSNBC called last Friday’s public testimony “a double-barreled problem for the president – triple barreled, maybe,” down the street (literally) Fox’s Sean Hannity declared it “a lousy day for the corrupt, do-nothing-for-three-years, radical, extreme socialist Democrats and their top allies known as the media mob.” [New York Times 11/17/19 front page]
All impeachments, obviously, are political events. And, all are divisive. Even after the impeachment hearings against Richard Nixon his approval rating barely dropped below 30%, meaning tens of millions of Americans thought that president was railroaded.
So too – if he gets removed from office – expect Trump to be consecrated as a martyr by Sean Hannity, his media ilk and tens of millions (perhaps 100 million) Americans.
And, based on the trend line, America will go through all this trauma again in a couple of decades. While not common, impeachment is becoming less rare.
I did get the table into the garage. Using a big piece of cardboard as a sled, I pushed the table up the steps and across the floors. I may not be as strong as I was decades ago but I try to act smarter.
Glenn Koenen