Revolution: Trump, Washington and “We the People” Hardcover – February 25, 2020    by KT McFarland

When candidate Donald Trump campaigned on calling China to account for its trade piracy, observers thought he was either crazy or dangerous.

Conventional Washington wisdom had assumed that an ascendant Beijing was almost preordained to world hegemony. Trump’s tariffs and polarization of China were considered about the worst thing an American president could do.

The accepted bipartisan strategy was to accommodate, not oppose, China’s growing power. The hope was that its newfound wealth and global influence would liberalize the ruling communist government.

Four years later, only a naif believes that. Instead, there is an emerging consensus that China’s cutthroat violations of international norms were long ago overdue for an accounting.

China’s re-education camps, its Orwellian internal surveillance, its crackdown on Hong Kong democracy activists and its secrecy about the deadly coronavirus outbreak have all convinced the world that China has now become a dangerous international outlier.

Trump courted moderate Arab nations in forming an anti-Iranian coalition opposed to Iran’s terrorist and nuclear agendas. His policies utterly reversed the Obama administration’s estrangement from Israel and outreach to Tehran.

Last week, Trump nonchalantly offered the Palestinians a take-it-or-leave-it independent state on the West Bank, but without believing that a West Bank settlement was the key to peace in the entire Middle East.

Trump’s cancellation of the Iran deal, in particular, was met with international outrage. More global anger followed after the targeted killing of Iranian terrorist leader Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

In short, Trump’s Middle East recalibrations won few supporters among the bipartisan establishment.

But recently, Europeans have privately started to agree that more sanctions are needed on Iran, that the world is better off with Soleimani gone, and that the West Bank is not central to regional peace.

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Donald Trump visited Congress this week to declare the state of the union “stronger than ever before.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi concluded the evening by highlighting the state of the Democratic Party: Intensely—perhaps fatally—divided.

That’s the prism through which to view this week’s headlines: The Iowa debacle, Democrats’ State of the Union theatrics, the president’s impeachment acquittal. Division has coursed through Democratic politics for at least the past four years. The media tries hard to present this split as nothing more than the usual intraparty tension. It’s significantly deeper than that, and Democratic hopes for the 2020 election hinge on it.

The Iowa derailment didn’t begin Monday afternoon or even in the months leading up to the failure of the results-reporting app. This train went off the tracks right after the 2016 Democratic primary contest, as a bitter progressive wing of the party stewed over Bernie Sanders’s defeat. They accused the Democratic establishment of rigging the process for Hillary Clinton—starting with Iowa, where the results were close, and where Mr. Sanders’s supporters outright challenged the legitimacy of Mrs. Clinton’s victory.

Hoping for peace, and in the name of “transparency,” party officials adopted the wildly complicated system on display Monday. The delayed results continue to be riddled with errors, making the outcome even less credible than in 2016. Sanders allies are already crying foul. They’re also pointing to new Democratic National Committee rules for debates, and nominations for convention spots, as evidence that one side of the party is again trying to deny the other side a victory.

That there are two, extremely polarized sides is also the one clear takeaway from the Iowa muddle. While the Sanders and Pete Buttigieg campaigns argue over how many state-delegate equivalents can dance on the head of a pin, the bigger point is that they ended the final vote with near equal numbers. Overall, the two candidates unapologetically pushing Medicare for All (Bernie and Elizabeth Warren) took 47% of the final vote, while the three more “moderate” contenders (Mr. Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar) took 51%.

The chasm in the party has been on display particularly under Speaker Pelosi’s leadership. It brewed in the bitter spring fights over which wing got its way on how to sanction Rep. Ilhan Omar for anti-Semitic comments; which wing spoke for the party on climate and health care; which wing set its antigun agenda. And most consequentially, which wing won the day on impeachment. Mrs. Pelosi ultimately gave in to threats against her speakership and allowed her firebrands to serve as the face of the party in a weak and doomed impeachment proceeding.

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney is basking in positive headlines after voting to convict, but the more immediately consequential votes remain those cast by Democratic moderates—who were sacrificed to the passions of Mrs. Pelosi’s liberal wing. Thirty-one House Democrats are on the ballot this year in districts won in 2016 by Mr. Trump—who has climbed to a personal-high 49% Gallup approval rating. Sen. Doug Jones (D., Ala.) voted to convict a president who won his state by 28 points last time around. Sen. Gary Peters (D., Mich.) is facing uneven polling numbers. Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) is spared an election this year but hasn’t helped his future election prospects.

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Hypocrisy is common in Washington, but impeachment is bringing out more than its fair share. That’s true of some Republicans, and the mainstream media devotes countless hours to it. What gets much less attention is the hypocrisy of the party that to which most journalists are sympathetic: the Democrats.

Take Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. On Tuesday he demanded the Senate call witnesses, claiming they’re required for a “fair trial” and slamming Republican opposition as a “coverup.” But the GOP position is exactly what Mr. Schumer’s was during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999. Back then he said it “doesn’t make sense” for the Senate to call witnesses.

More important than hypocrisy about the process of impeachment is hypocrisy about the substance. Removing a president is the most draconian act Congress can take. It ill serves America if the party opposed to the president uses impeachment as a political weapon to tarnish his standing and weaken him for the next election.

When considering the Democrats’ high-minded arguments, ask yourself: What if Hillary Clinton won in 2016? After she took office, it would have been revealed that her campaign hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS, which assigned Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence official, to reach out to Russian counterparts to solicit dirt on Donald Trump. Recall that the since-discredited dossier Mr. Steele peddled to the media in the fall of 2016 was made up of unsubstantiated rumors from former Russian agents.

It’s naive to believe the Kremlin was unaware that Mr. Steele asked Moscow pals for dirt on Mr. Trump. Those spies are retired, but they rely on Vladimir Putin for their pension checks. Who among congressional Democrats would now be calling for Mrs. Clinton’s removal if she were in the Oval Office? I doubt any. I’ve searched in vain for Democratic criticism for her soliciting foreign involvement in the 2016 election—the principal charge of their impeachment case against President Trump.

Furthermore, while Democrats say Mr. Trump should be removed for seeking a quid pro quo—a Ukrainian investigation of Joe and Hunter Biden in return for U.S. military aid—what about President Barack Obama’s March 2012 open-mic moment? At a summit in Seoul, he asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to tell his boss, then-Prime Minister Putin, that “on all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space. . . . This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” In other words, if Mr. Putin didn’t create problems during Mr. Obama’s re-election fight with Mitt Romney, Mr. Obama would show “flexibility” on missile defense and other important issues of national security and foreign policy after the election. Again, crickets when it comes to Democratic criticism.

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Think the fog of partisan Trump investigations will lift once the President leaves office, either in 2021 or 2025? Not if Elizabeth Warren has anything to say about it. With the Iowa caucuses approaching and her campaign fortunes flagging, Senator Warren now says that as President she’d launch an open-ended criminal investigation into her predecessor and anyone who worked for him.

Ms. Warren’s latest “anti-corruption” plan says she would create “a Justice Department Task Force to investigate corruption during the Trump administration and to hold government officials accountable for illegal activity.” She would order Justice to look for violations of “federal bribery laws, insider trading laws, and other anti-corruption and public integrity laws” as well as immigration-enforcement offenses.

“This will be no ordinary transition between administrations,” the document says ominously. Team Warren won’t be satisfied with taking control of the executive branch in an election. They also want scalps of choice ex-officials. The plan links to news articles about Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, White House Adviser KellyanneCon way and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.

If there is evidence of a crime by a former Administration official, it should be investigated through the normal channels. Ms. Warren is proposing something different: A law-enforcement task force dedicated to searching for wrongdoing only by political opponents. This would be familiar in Latin American dictatorships where the party that loses an election may be jailed as retribution.

Pundits said Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign threat to investigate Hillary Clinton for her email mismanagement was a chilling breach of democratic norms. We opposed such an investigation but at least the alleged misconduct was limited to specific conduct by one official, whereas Ms. Warren wants investigations of all Republican officials for any political offenses.

Despite all the apocalyptic think-pieces and high-minded books, America has not become an “autocracy” three years into Donald Trump’s Presidency. The opposition party won the House in the midterms, proceeded to impeach the President, and its leading candidates are ahead in the head-to-head 2020 presidential election polls.

Yet in polarized times the temptation to criminalize political differences is stronger than ever. It will be especially strong for Democrats once they are back in control of the Justice Department. Down Senator Warren’s road lies a real threat to liberty.