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What would it really take for Trump to resign?

2019-09-30T23:53:15.389Z


[OPINION] Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said Saturday that the best thing President Trump could do for the country is to resign. Instead of forcing the country to go through ...


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Editor's note: Julian Zelizer, a political analyst at CNN, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University and the author of the next book Burning Down the House: Newt Gingrich, The Fall of a Speaker, and the Rise of the New Republican Party Follow him on Twitter: @julianzelizer. The opinions expressed in this column are yours.

(CNN) - Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke said Saturday that the best thing President Trump could do for the country is to resign. Instead of forcing the country to go through a divisive process of political trial or elections that leave the land razed, said O'Rourke, the president must decide, for the good of the country and his own good, that he should withdraw.

“The best possible way, especially if you are worried about a country that has never been more divided, perhaps more polarized every day, is that this president resign, allow this country to heal and make sure that we return together to the larger agenda and ambitious that we have never faced, none of that possible as long as he remains in power, ”O'Rourke told an audience in Austin.

O'Rourke's request for the president to step aside has solid roots in American political history.

This week, Robert Schenkkan's The Great Society opens at Lincoln Center in New York City. The play, a sequel to Tony Schenkkan's award-winning All the Way , focuses on the tumultuous years of President Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) between 1965 and 1968, when his decision to intensify the war in Vietnam came to devastate his presidency.

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“In terms of Shakespeare,” Schenkkan tells me by email, “the two works of LBJ are consciously modeled in Shakespeare's historical games. This is a variant of the Wheel of Fortune. The only constant of power is that its control is only temporary. The king is dead, long live the king. ”

While his political opponents criticized the "Johnson War" as unfair and unnecessary, Johnson, played on the Broadway directed by Brian Cox of "Succession," saw how his great domestic achievements, such as Medicare and voting rights, were drowning by calamities foreign and domestic The disastrous war consumed the nation at the same time that a violent civil rights reaction that was brewing destroyed Johnson's coalition.

When anti-war Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy took a strong second place in the Democratic presidential primaries of New Hampshire in 1968, Johnson's team was stunned.

On March 31, 1968, Johnson surprised the nation. The president finalized a nationally televised speech on the temporary detention of the bombings in Vietnam by saying: "I will not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as its president." Even his advisors did not know about that part of the speech.

READ : Did Trump betray his country?

As I tell in my book The Fierce Urgency Now , there was jubilation in certain parts of the country with Johnson's announcement, particularly where sentiment against the war was strengthening. In the Greenwich Village of New York, people took to the streets to sing "Goodbye Lyndon."

In addition to his fear of defeat, Johnson explained that stepping aside was the only noble option that would allow him to devote his full attention to discovering the end of the war and letting the nation begin to unite, without political considerations looming over his head.

LBJ was not the only president who made this decision. Johnson had observed since the Senate in 1952, when President Harry Truman, facing terrible approval rates and a stagnant conflict in Korea, decided that he would not run for re-election. Johnson's successor, President Richard Nixon, before a House of Representatives ready to vote for articles of political trial and a Senate open to dismiss him, decided to resign from office in August 1974, before his term ended.

What are the chances that President Trump will make the same decision?

The prospects that Trump will end his career instead of forcing others to do it for him, be it Congress or the electorate, seem remote. Trump loves fighting and seems to be revolutionized by the prospect of facing the Democratic Chamber. In recent days, he launched a storm on Twitter attacking all his opponents. In a tweet, he wrote about the representative Adam Schiff: "I want Schiff to be interrogated at the highest level for Fraud and Betrayal."

Trump has spent his entire career responding to the coup when he has been attacked, and at this moment he believes he has all the support of his party in this political battle. With memories of the 1998 partial elections, when the electorate punished the Republican Party for accusing President Bill Clinton, Trump is betting that voters will turn against the Democrats instead of against him, putting him in an even stronger position. for election day.

There are some experts who speculate that this disaster could end with the resignation of the president, not for the good of the nation, but for the sake of his own future. They visualize some type of agreement that grants legal immunity against prosecution in exchange for leaving office. In other words, the resignation would be your card to get out of jail.

But it is extremely difficult to imagine that Trump will voluntarily come to the same decision that the public is seeing Brian Cox recreate in The Great Society . Johnson loved to fight, but he also had a deep respect for the democratic institutions of the nation and for the duties of the Government. Trump no. He has joined a generation of Republicans who are willing to tear down everything if necessary in search of partisan power. He also seems to have little reverence or even respect for his position.

If there is going to be a result of the type O'Rourke talks about, it is probably not by voluntary choice. And except for some type of legal agreement that he cannot reject, this president will continue to fight until he can no longer.

The only way to achieve a Johnsonian result, in Trump's case, would be through the path of Richard Nixon. The future will depend on what the Senate Republicans decide what they want to do with a president without a law.

If the majority leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, met with Trump to let them know that his colleagues would not support the administration if a trial showed that the articles of political judgment are correct, the president would suddenly be the one sitting in the other end of the boardroom table ready to be told: "You're fired!"

Only then would the possibility of resignation become real. At this time, however, we are not even close to that point. Many key Senate Republicans have turned to the chambers to affirm their support for the president.

READ : Trump's allies are worried because he doesn't understand the seriousness of the political trial fight

"I think it is very appropriate for the president of the United States to suggest that there is a corruption problem and this prosecutor who was fired, maybe it was because he was corrupt or maybe because he was looking for something close to the United States here," Senator Lindsey said. Graham to journalists last week.

As much as they may rumble privately about the impropriety of a president who dictates foreign policy on the basis of promises of electoral assistance, Senate Republicans are firmly behind the White House at the moment. The situation is so extreme that some experts are not convinced that McConnell would even call a trial in the Senate, once again breaking the constitutional rules for the good of the Republican Party, even though McConnell has said he would.

However, one should never say in American politics, especially because political parties tend to reverse the course when they see that doing more of the same will break their control of power.

The power of partisanship on which Trump has depended could be put against him if the party no longer sees him as what suits him best. More than good conscience or realism, the loss of Republican support in the Senate will be the only event that can leave President Trump alone, with no choice but to resign.

Political judgment

Source: cnnespanol

All news articles on 2019-09-30

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