Within the
impeachment debate, a Trump refrain has been “where was the crime?” After all,
what damage was really done? Volodymyr Zelansky got his White House visit and
Ukraine got its aid and javelin rockets. Clearly, this is a Hoax, a Sham, a Witch
Hunt!
But what if
the President and his agents were not so inept? I’m a fan of the alternate
history genre (think “Fatherland,” by Robert Harris), so let me spin an
alternate outcome here.
Suppose the
plan to damage Biden was more clandestine; professionally planned and executed,
the call was never made or successfully buried, and Trump had more loyal forces installed in
the State Department and in the ambassadorial ranks. What if the whistle blower
never materialized? What if Trump didn’t make the stupid decision to resurrect
the debunked 2016 Ukrainian election interference plot and add it to the soup. Or
what if the quid-pro-quo was delivered quietly and without a trail by a trusted
confidant.
Could we
have then seen a credible new Ukrainian president, who had run on an
anti-corruption platform, hold a convincing news conference on CNN,
strategically timed before the Iowa caucus. Zelansky soberly announces as part
of his broad corruption investigation, a serious inquiry into Hunter Biden,
Burisma Holdings, and by association, former Vice-President Joe Biden. No one ever
discovers any fingerprints of the Trump administration’s shakedown of Ukraine.
Biden,
already stumbling in Iowa, comes in a distant fifth place, with no clear
winner. Leading up to Super Tuesday, Russia and fringe-right groups spin a
brilliant digital campaign that keeps the Burisma issue alive. Warren and
Sanders join in the questioning in order to bolster their chances; and the Trump
administration’s blunders and missteps move to page two.
The
Democratic Convention opens in Milwaukee on July 13th with no
presumptive nominee, chaos ensues; however, Biden is finally confirmed on the
third round of balloting. Very little time is spent on Republican policy
failures in the first term.
On January
20, 2021 Donald Trump strides to the podium for his second inaugural address.
In the campaign, Biden continued to be dogged by Ukraine and a proposed Senate
investigation that never actually took place. He won the popular vote but lost
in the electoral college.
It turns
out that Trump was very much like Ray Winkler in Woody Allen’s hit “Small Time
Crooks.” But what if he were a bit cleverer and more sinister? Trump could also
have been the Keyser Soze character in Bryan Singer’s “The Usual Suspects.”
High crimes
and misdemeanors are still high crimes and misdeneanors regardless of the outcome. They should not be judged by the success or failure of the illicit act. An alternate history in this recent incident with the Ukraine could have been
quite grave to our democracy and our nation - and we might never have discovered it.
This is precisely why impeachment was the appropriate course of action.
