I keep getting requests for money to help eliminate the Electoral College, which, of course, I would love to see happen, for, when you think about it, its reason for being had to do with the founders’ fear of a direct popular vote that a demagogue might manipulate to his advantage.
Yet, thanks to the Electoral College, a demagogue was elected in 2016 — Hillary Clinton having won the popular vote by about three million, and Caesar Disgustus having won the Electoral College by 304-227. Thus the Electoral College, designed as a check on demagoguery, enabled a demagogue to become president.
So, yes, let’s get rid of this relic, this skewer of presidential elections. I’d be willing to abide by what a simple majority of people decides. I think the republic can withstand it.
And speaking of Armaged Don, it was with no little frisson of delight that I saw all those solemn senators on The Times’s front page this morning. And on the right, Patrick Leahy, as good a symbol of moral authority as I can think of.
It is serious business they confront, not a peccadillo, but rather the very self-dealing the founders feared a president, who should at all times put his or her country first, might indulge in.
Caesar’s defenders say no law was broken, but those who wrote the Constitution didn’t say there had to be, figuring that “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” would be sufficiently proscriptive to prevent a president from attempting to abuse the powers with which he’d been entrusted.
This is all textbook stuff that the Senate has been asked to examine — there is evidence, there are witnesses — Impeachment 101. As I’ve said before, betrayal of the public trust by attempting to enlist the head of a foreign government in subverting our electoral process falls well within the high crimes and misdemeanors ballpark. No need to lock him up. Just remove him from power.
Whether the senators will act judiciously or not remains, as of this writing, to be seen. Probably not, though the somber oath-taking may have concentrated some minds as unquietly crows the Don.