(…the one with no friends)
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Well, it’s done. It finally happened.
Last week in Washington, DC, and for only the third time in US history, Congress agreed on something.
I’m lying, of course. The two opposing “aisles” have never agreed on anything, except agreeing to take eighteen weeks of paid vacation for Thanksgiving.
What really happened last week – really, for only the third time ever — was that the House of Misrepresentatives voted to impeach a sitting President, this time for the high crime of being a big doodie-head.
That’s their prerogative, of course. The list of impeachment-level offenses is right there in the US Constitution, Article II, Section 4: Treason, Bribery, other high Crimes & Misdemeanors, and Not Really Being Liked A Whole Lot.
Post-Mortem Sidebar: When they heard the 2019 impeachment “charges,” the Founding Fathers collectively retched, which is hard to do when you’re dead, unless you’re Keith Richards.
As mentioned, this wasn’t America’s first impeachment, as every high school American History teacher will tell you, unless that part of American history’s already been removed from American History textbooks by the avid crusaders in the history revisionist posse. And as of last week, there have now been three impeachments, as every high school student knows unless they were busy thumb-texting “R U THEIR LOL” and never learned to count as high as three.
Educational Sidebar: To be fair, math can be a challenge. I’m proud to say that I can count to three without assistance; however, to count to eleven, I have to take off a shoe. Or both. I forget.
In fact, nearly every President has faced some sort of demands for removal, even Barack “Captain Teleprompter” Obama, a man who was so popular that he got elected even after claiming he campaigned in fifty-six of the fifty States. And back at the end of the twentieth century, George W. Bush came under fire after he dared to win an election against some guy in Florida named Chad.
From my perspective, I can see how somebody might eventually want to remove any President. The fact that a person would actually want that job makes them a little bit nuts. To quote Groucho, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.”
The first time a US President was impeached was in 1868, which for some reason was in the 19th century (see “math challenges”). The first impeachee was President Lincoln’s vice-president, Andrew Johnson, who at the time held the Guinness Book world record for continuously not smiling.
Theatrical Sidebar: Johnson assumed the presidency after someone pointed out that “Lincoln” and “Kennedy” both have seven letters.
Apparently, President Johnson’s “high Crime or Misdemeanor” was that he tried to fire somebody, and if saying You’re fired was the impeachment bar today, pre-President Trump might’ve been impeached from his own TV show.
For better or worse, President Johnson survived the impeachment effort, and everybody inside the DC beltway got back to trying to figure out what a carpetbagger is. That initial impeachment effort did have at least one positive result: it confirmed the theorem that “a Congressman can do any amount of work imaginable, as long as it’s not the work they are supposed to be doing.”
At least five major wars later, President Bill “To Is Or Not To Is” Clinton became the second-ever impeached Oval Officer. As if having to go home to Hillary every night wasn’t punishment aplenty.
Healthcare Sidebar: I don’t count out 1983 invasion of Grenada as a war; it was more of a desperate extraction. At the time, there were dozens of potential doctors about to graduate from a Grenada med school, and we needed to nip that in the bud.
Clinton’s particular impeachable peccadillo was hard to pin down, beyond the blisteringly obvious offense of not knowing the definition of the most common verb in the English language. Sure, he committed adultery on the job, but he could hardly be sequestered for that: President Kennedy turned wanton sex into a team sport. Sure, he committed perjury, but if lying were grounds for termination, the District of Columbia would have less residents than Chernobyl.
Ultimately, the Clinton impeachment failed, too, forcing anti-Clinton partisans to ban after-hours pizza delivery to the Oval Office, a move that President Clinton squashed with something called a pocket veto, and trust me – you do not want to know what that means.
So – back to the future. Last week, President Donald Trump became the third-ever target to actually be impeached. Of course, he says he did nothing wrong, other than nudging various Russians to look into why Joe Biden’s son suddenly took first prize on ‘Ukraine’s Got Talent!”
His accusers in the House next charged that President Trump once reneged on a Monopoly railroad purchase, and had weird hair. Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, denied the railroad charge and countered that The Donald was just holding the hair for a friend.
Unfortunate Coif Sidebar: Donald Trump has Whoopi Goldberg’s original hair.
As yet, it remains to be seen how things will work out for America’s third impeached President. But one thing’s for certain:
If tweeting is ever deemed a high Crime, the guy is doomed.