The sheer arcane ceremony of it all may carry us through what’s to come. On Tuesday, the House of Representatives presented two articles of impeachment against the President* of the United States for the third time in the nation’s history. They weren’t sent by email. They were placed in a wooden box and literally transferred by foot across the Capitol to the Senate where, next week, the President* of the United States will be put on trial for offenses against the Constitution and for violations of the oath of office that he took outside that same building on a cloud-banked day in January of 2017.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed a team of “managers” to plead the House’s case, and she leaned heavily toward a litigation team, leaving off some of the more prominent voices for impeachment in favor of folks with trial experience or, in the case of Florida Rep. Val Demings, whose performance in the committee hearings was a revelation, an ex-cop who knows how to talk to perps. The two rookies—Jason Crow of Colorado and Sylvia Garcia of Texas—also have deep courtroom chops: Crow is a lawyer and military veteran, and Garcia used to be a judge in Houston. The “lead counsel,” as it were, will probably be Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and the person most familiar with the material evidence, which is increasing every day at this point.

But the rhetoric that surrounded this announcement was deeper than resumes and seniority. The House managers placed the burden of history squarely where it now belongs: on the members of the Republican majority in the Senate. It is up to those people to judge whether loyalty to Mitch McConnell and the grubby group of grifters in and around the White House is more important than the founding principles of the Constitution. As Pelosi said:

Let me just say what is at stake here is the Constitution of the United States. This is what an impeachment is about. The president violated his oath of office. Undermined our national security. Jeopardized the integrity of our elections. Tried to use the appropriations process as his private ATM machine to withhold funds in order to advance his personal and political advantage. That is what the senators should be looking into. This is a president who said...Article 2 says that I can do whatever I want. It does not.

Pelosi debuts the impeachment managers. (L-R): Hakeem Jeffries, Sylvia Garcia, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Val Demings, Zoe Lofgren, Jason Crow. OLIVIER DOULIERY Getty Images

He's undermining the beautiful, exquisite, brilliant, genius of the Constitution, the separation of powers by granting to himself the powers of a monarch which is exactly what Benjamin Franklin said we didn't have, a republic, if we can keep it. So this is a very serious matter, and we take it to heart. And really, in a solemn way. In a very solemn way. It's about the Constitution. It's about the republic if we can keep it. And they shouldn't be frivolous with the Constitution of the united states. Even though the President of the United States has. The president is not above the law. He will be held accountable.

And that is why the proper historical analogue to this event is not the impeachment of Bill Clinton, but the impeachment of Andrew Johnson. The Clinton impeachment was the isolated case of one man’s clumsy foibles within the confines of the civil and criminal justice systems. No other constitutional principle was under discussion. No constitutional institution was at risk. The balance of powers was not in danger of coming unraveled unless Clinton had been removed from office for such relatively flimsy charges, political accelerants aside.

Andrew Johnson disobeyed an act passed by Congress specifically to rein in his powers. This was a full-speed collision between Article I and Article II powers. That’s what the impeachment of this president* is, too. If anything, the actions addressed by this impeachment are even cruder than Johnson’s were, and Johnson was drunk a lot of the time. The current impeachment is shot through with actions that remind you how closely cupidity and stupidity rhyme. When the House managers walked the articles across the Capitol, the Founders walked with them, although many of them were probably astonished at how low and grubby high crimes can be.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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