Should President Trump be impeached?

Millions of Americans are asking themselves that question as the House Intelligence Committee begins televised impeachment hearings Wednesday. As Democrats and Republicans look at what is publicly known so far, they are coming up with dramatically different answers.

The impeachment question is like a Rorschach test – the psychological test in which people look at inkblots and tell a tester what the inkblots look like. Looking at the same inkblots, different people often see very different things.

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A lot of evidence about what most Democrats consider Trump’s misconduct – and what most Republicans say is either OK or at least not impeachable – has already been published and broadcast. In fact, so much is out there that most people with busy lives don’t have time to keep up with it all.

But in most cases, if you ask a Democrat about the evidence known so far, he or she will say it paints a picture of an arrogant and dishonest president who abuses his power for political and personal gain and thinks he is above the law.

If you ask a Republican, he or she will most likely judge the evidence quite differently – the way two different people see very different pictures in the inkblots of the Rorschach test.

Republicans typically think Trump has done a good job in office and should stay there, leaving it to voters to determine if he should serve another four years beginning in 2021.

The Republicans say Democrats are attacking Trump because they can’t stand his policies and the way he conducts himself and want to weaken him before he runs for reelection next year – not because he’s guilty of serious wrongdoing.

And Republicans often get hung up on the process of the impeachment inquiry now being conducted by the House Intelligence Committee, rather than the substance of the accusations against Trump.

The central accusation is that Trump held up nearly $400 million in vital aid for Ukraine to pressure that nation’s president to launch an investigation of Democratic presidential contender former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, who served on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company.

We need to keep our different views of the Trump Rorschach test in perspective. Sometimes we simply have to agree to disagree with friends and loved ones on political issues and not let them become all-consuming.

In other words, Trump is accused of placing his own interest above our national interest, which requires America to support Ukraine against Russian military forces that have already seized control of Crimea and threaten Eastern Ukraine.

Democratic critics of Trump also accuse him of obstruction of Congress by trying to stop administration officials from testifying in the impeachment inquiry. And they criticize his repeated attacks on the anonymous whistleblower who got the impeachment inquiry started with a complaint about Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

And don’t get me started on all the other things many Democrats accuse Trump of doing – that would take up a book.

I have both Democratic and Republican friends. How do I talk to the warring camps? And how can you without hurting friendships or even marriages when the two people come out on different sides of the impeachment debate?

Americans were already divided over President Trump. The impeachment fight has widened those divides, causing arguments among friends and within families. We can anticipate plenty of heated discussions around Thanksgiving tables around the country later this month.

We need to keep our different views of the Trump Rorschach test in perspective. Sometimes we simply have to agree to disagree with friends and loved ones on political issues and not let them become all-consuming. We shouldn’t let these disagreements destroy our relationships.

When I talk to my friends of all political persuasions about impeachment, I remind them that this will almost certainly not result in kicking Donald Trump out of the White House. Impeachment is an action by a majority vote in the House charging the president with wrongdoing to warrant removal from office.

Actually removing Trump requires 67 votes after a trial in the Senate. But Democrats and allied independents only hold 47 Senate seats. Even if all vote to convict Trump, another 20 Republicans would have to join them to oust Trump from the White House. At this time that looks like it would be virtually impossible.

Polls show Americans are about evenly split on what should happen to Trump. In total, pollsters tell us about 49 percent want Trump impeached and convicted so he can be removed from office, while 46 percent oppose his impeachment and removal.

But the figures are dramatically different when broken down by political party. Some 88 percent of Democrats want Trump removed from office, but 90 percent of Republicans oppose impeachment and removal.

As the evidence mounts against Trump’s misconduct, more and more Republicans are acknowledging that the president’s actions were inappropriate – but argue that they were not impeachable. But Trump insists he did nothing wrong and says his call with the president of Ukraine was “perfect.”

Keep in mind that the House has impeached only two presidents: Andrew Johnson after the Civil War and Bill Clinton. Johnson and Clinton were acquitted in Senate trials. President Richard Nixon resigned when it seemed certain the House was about to impeach him in the Watergate scandal.

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In Trump’s case, I think we will see a repeat of what we saw when Clinton and Johnson were impeached. That is, he will be impeached by the House but remain in office after the Senate fails to get 67 votes to convict him.

And keep in mind that Clinton’s approval rating jumped to 74 percent after being impeached and that Republicans then lost seats in in both the House and the Senate. House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., resigned.

I don’t think the House pursuing impeachment will lead to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stepping down. And as we recently saw in the Nov. 5 elections, Democrats were not hurt by the impeachment inquiry process, especially in Virginia and Kentucky.

But Pelosi has reluctantly moved to open the impeachment inquiry. She knows it is dividing the country and she knows impeachment will need some Republican support to be seen as something other than a partisan attack on Trump.

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I tell my Democratic friends that the only way to ensure that Donald Trump is removed from office and made a one-term president is with the power of their vote. They can’t rely on the impeachment process to do this for them.

Congress with its power to impeach and remove might not be able to help Democrats achieve their goal, but all Americans can certainly help elect a new president – or decide to keep Trump in office – with their votes in November 2020. This is the strength of our democracy, and it is what made American great long before any of us alive today were born.