David Frum: This Is a Constitutional Crisis

[babylonsister]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/this-is-a-constitutional-crisis/569443/

This Is a Constitutional Crisis
A cowardly coup from within the administration threatens to enflame the president’s paranoia and further endanger American security.
4:54 PM ET
David Frum


Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment is a constitutional mechanism. Mass resignations followed by voluntary testimony to congressional committees are a constitutional mechanism. Overt defiance of presidential authority by the president’s own appointees—now that’s a constitutional crisis.

If the president’s closest advisers believe that he is morally and intellectually unfit for his high office, they have a duty to do their utmost to remove him from it, by the lawful means at hand. That duty may be risky to their careers in government or afterward. But on their first day at work, they swore an oath to defend the Constitution—and there were no “riskiness” exemptions in the text of that oath.

On Wednesday, though, a “senior official in the Trump administration” published an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, writing:

Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know. I am one of them.

The author of the anonymous op-ed is hoping to vindicate the reputation of like-minded senior Trump staffers. See, we only look complicit! Actually, we’re the real heroes of the story.

But what the author has just done is throw the government of the United States into even more dangerous turmoil. He or she has enflamed the paranoia of the president and empowered the president’s willfulness.

snip//

What would be better?

Speak in your own name. Resign in a way that will count. Present the evidence that will justify an invocation of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, or an impeachment, or at the very least, the first necessary step toward either outcome, a Democratic Congress after the November elections.

Your service in government is valuable. Thank you for it. But it is not so indispensable that it can compensate for the continuing tenure of a president you believe to be amoral, untruthful, irrational, anti-democratic, unpatriotic, and dangerous. Previous generations of Americans have sacrificed fortunes, health, and lives to serve the country. You are asked only to tell the truth aloud and with your name attached.

[BigmanPigman]

1. That is exactly how I have looked at this op ed

all afternoon. Frum put my feelings about it into words. The author is not a hero and does not deserve any thanks for saving us. A real hero would stop putting party over country, which is what is happening, and come forward and start the process for removing him BEFORE 2020. We are in danger and this person is a coward.

[bdamomma]

5. or is it

putting their greed over everything.

[BigmanPigman]

7. Correct.

The GRAND Old Party is the GREEDY Old (white male) Party and has been for decades.

[bdamomma]

8. For decades

for real. They have been only for themselves.

[spanone]

2. K&R...

[marybourg]

3. Very well said.

[john657]

4. K&R.

[Solly Mack]

6. I don't thank the letter writer for anything.

The fucking mess we wake up to each morning is now an even bigger fucking mess. The craven Op-ed writer is just as bad as Trump.

Wouldn't work for Trump otherwise.

Trying come off as some sort of savior. How is that any different from Mister "I Alone"?

Fuck them all.

[babylonsister]

10. I think that's pretty much what Frum

is saying. Come out, light sanitizes.

[Solly Mack]

12. I'd like for them to show themselves.

And then drop them off in the middle of a Trump rally.

I'd love to see Trump humiliated and removed from office.

But I would also love to see his enablers get exactly what they deserve..and that letter writer is an enabler pretending to be something else.

[Blue_true]

17. Wouldn't you be an accomplice to murder if you dropped them in the middle

of a Trump rally after they outted themselves? The crazies there would slaughter the person.

But otherwise I agree. The oped writer is no hero, but more of a sniveling coward.

[Solly Mack]

18. Not hardly.

But thank you for your concern for my legal well being.

[Fred Sanders]

16. A great start for a top insider to reveal the cancer within the WH, in full light. Credit where

credit is due.

And may have impact on Kavanaugh hearings...who can support a nomination from a madman?

[Solly Mack]

19. You want to give them some credit. I don't.

That's where it is and where it will remain.

[duforsure]

9. This is a call and plea for help

For either using the 25th amendment, or for the republican'ts to impeach him, or this is going to result in them losing both the House and the Senate . Cheeto shouldn't have any choice of a justice on the Supreme court, especially a liar and a corrupt one like Kavanaugh. It should be postponed now until he's gone. Just think kavanaugh could allow him to go after all of them too.

[workinclasszero]

11. It's been a constitutional crisis

Since Putin,Comey, Cambridge Analytic, the Green Party, the GOP and Facebook subverted the election and installed Orange Hitler!

People just now getting that huh?

[Ponietz]

26. +1

and the NRA

[workinclasszero]

28. Yes Putin owns those bastards too!

[tblue37]

13. K&R for visibility. nt

[Bear Creek]

14. This too

https://woub.org/2018/09/05/trump-treats-diplomacy-and-intelligence-like-reality-tv-says-security-expert/
Listened to this on the way home

[ancianita]

15. The fact that they've NOT done their utmost abuse of power.

Conspiracy to obstruct justice, as well. And if they’ve enriched themselves from Russian sources and refused to do the above, racketeering. The whole or some parts add up to high crimes and misdemeanors. Maybe in aiding and abetting a hostile foreign power, treason.

[Honeycombe8]

20. I guess he's right. But others have resigned or were fired. They signed NDAs, didn't they?

Trump required them to sign Nondisclosure agreements, didn't he? Is that legal? If not, that is one more thing he's not being held accountable for.

Congress knows. They know. It doesn't matter who speaks, how they speak, whether they speak, what evidence they have. The Republicans are not going to do anything.

It will be up to the Democrats in the House, if they pull the Blue Wave off. But with the Senate remaining Republican, what exactly can they get done? The Democrats don't need staffers to quit and speak out. We know what's going on, already. But it depends on what they have to say.

We are in a fix. We are in a Constitutional crisis, like David Frum says.

First things first: we must have a Blue Wave.

[bucolic_frolic]

21. Further derangement is ensured, but this will hinder Republicans in November

so the goal of augmenting opposition in a new Congress is enhanced by this action in my view

As for what Trump can do ... tweet, bluster, and make things miserable for all in the short run. I doubt he will grab total operational control of his administration - that's not the way he has worked historically. So power is still under check, and divided to some small extent. I don't see much changing in the short run.

And no this is not a Constitutional Crisis. Such a crisis involves power struggles and litigation before the upper level Federal Courts, appeals to the Supreme Court, Senators huddling and not knowing what to do, and full width newspaper headlines in most all big city dailies with heavy legal overtones involving sovereignty, checks and balances, and imminent impeachment debates. This petty leak has none of that.

[relayerbob]

24. Oh, we are well into the midst of a constitutional crisis

The obvious attempts to steal the Supreme Court is the most obvious example. I will agree we are far from it's peak, things are likely to get much more intense before it is over

[bucolic_frolic]

25. No, we're not.

No one knows what to do, but the mechanisms of the Constitution remain unplumbed and intact, even though they are inactive. A Constitutional crisis is not paralysis and inaction. It is public legal and political clashes. Stealing the Court was not a crisis because Democrats didn't make it into a crisis, they just went along and barely pushed back at McConnell.

When the 25th Amendment is invoked, and Trump won't leave, and barricades himself with loyalists, we have a Constitutional Crisis. When Federal Marshalls carry out warrants and are refused by executive privilege, we have a crisis. Something has to conflict, with no obvious solution. Politics is not a crisis. Impasse is a crisis. IMHO anyway.

[relayerbob]

29. By then, it will be too late

The "crisis" is now, what you describe is the battle for control, IMO. I suppose it's just matter of semantics. The occupation of the Sudetenland was the crisis, but the war was yet to start.

[BlueWI]

22. Unprecedented, weird, and unsettling.

Has there been a stranger piece of political communication from a current presidency than this? An admission to the press that the president is unfit to serve, but continuing to press an agenda that may or may not be his?

And does this writer not recognize the obvious problematic nature of pressing on while the president is unfit?

Why on Earth would someone go to the press with this, as if this minimizes the problem?

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. A smart and twisted man said this (Hunter S. Thompson), and it finally makes sense at this moment.

You think you've seen everything from Camp Runamuck, and now this!!!

[relayerbob]

23. Resigning would be to play into Trump's hands

Nope, far better to keep the helm as straight and controlled as possible. We are heading into an incredible storm. And triggering Trump's paranoia into a truly public psychotic break, may indeed be the best thing that could happen. I get Frum's post, and in that light am disgusted by people like Jeff Flake who are running and hiding rather than fighting back. In any case, I personally think this is a good thing. Let Trump focus his hatred and fear on worrying who of his appointed officials oppose him and not on teaming up with Russia to find new ways to destroy us.

[7wo7rees]

27. I want NYT to throw this turd into the punchbowl

Give us his name. Screw his hidey hole. You'll break his trust and gain ours.

[babylonsister]

30. Might not be a turd at all.

O'Donnell floated Dan Coats.