Illustration by João Fazenda

In the dazed aftermath of the 2016 election, as a vast portion of the country tried to come to terms with the fact that a fixture of the tabloids and of reality TV would be the next President of the United States, Stephen Bannon, one of Donald Trump’s senior advisers, sought to place the event in a historical context. Like Andrew Jackson, Bannon told The Hollywood Reporter, “We’re going to build an entirely new political movement.” Trump, embracing the comparison, hung a portrait of Jackson in the Oval Office. Superficially, the kinship made sense: both Jackson and Trump were wealthy men whose elections signified a populist turn in American politics. Both were ridiculed as uncouth and déclassé, and both saw their colorful marital history dissected in the newspapers. A deeper comparison would also have highlighted the racism associated with their political careers: Jackson owned slaves and directed the removal of Native Americans from their lands; Trump campaigned on a platform of removing people from the nation itself.

President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate points to another, potentially far more consequential area of commonality between the two Presidents. In 1832, the Supreme Court handed down a decision, in Worcester v. Georgia, that effectively prohibited the states from usurping Native Americans’ sovereignty over their lands. That conflicted with Jackson’s plans, and he responded by saying, in effect, good luck with enforcing that. Jackson’s critics saw such willingness to dismiss the authority of a co-equal branch of the government as further evidence that he had no business being in the Oval Office.

The Trump Administration’s strategy for fighting impeachment entails dismissing the authority of the third co-equal branch of government. The White House has steadfastly ignored the House of Representatives’ subpoenas to produce documents and witnesses relating to Trump’s alleged attempt to strong-arm the Ukrainian government to assist with a ploy to sink Joe Biden’s Presidential candidacy. It is not unheard-of for an Administration to stall or only partly comply with subpoenas. (The Republican-led House notably held Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt, in 2012, for not fully complying with subpoenas related to the Department of Justice’s Fast and Furious firearms sting operation.) But Trump has refused to comply at all, and congressional Republicans, ignoring one of their most important duties—executive oversight—have abetted his position.

At the start of trial, in eleven roll-call votes, the Republican majority voted down measures to request relevant documents or to hear from new witnesses regarding the Ukraine scheme. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, one of the House impeachment managers, gave an impassioned speech stating the case for summoning Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, to testify. He also told Jay Sekulow, one of Trump’s attorneys, who had questioned why the trial was even taking place, “We are here, sir, because President Trump pressured a foreign government to target an American citizen for political and personal gain.” He concluded by quoting a fellow-Brooklynite, the Notorious B.I.G.: “If you don’t know, now you know.” Biggie notwithstanding, the speech failed to move the Republican caucus.

The votes left open the possibility that witnesses and documents might become available, but only later in the proceedings—a state of affairs that Representative Adam Schiff, the lead House manager, called “ass-backwards.” The significance of the votes is twofold: not only did Senate Republicans co-sign the White House’s effort to turn the impeachment into a show trial; they reduced the power of the legislative branch to which they themselves belong.

In recent years, short-term thinking has come to define our politics to an alarming degree. In 2016, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court without so much as a vote, he seemed not to consider what might happen the next time a Republican President tried to shepherd a nominee through a Democratic Senate. The G.O.P. that has come to support Trump’s inflammatory nativism is failing to consider the demographic dead end it faces in alienating rapidly growing numbers of immigrant and minority voters. These decisions were bad for the Party and for judicial integrity. The Republican response to the impeachment is bad for the future of democracy.

It’s not difficult to discern what some of the long-term impacts of this short-term thinking may be. Trump’s coercive phone conversation with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, occurred after Attorney General William Barr had miscast the Mueller report as an exoneration of the Trump Administration’s alleged contacts with Russians trying to interfere in the 2016 election. Even after the whistle-blower’s account of the Ukraine call emerged, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s unofficial envoy, travelled to that country on his behalf. And, even in the midst of the trial, Trump continues to push a false conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the last election. An acquittal in the Senate would confirm Trump’s dangerous idea of an omnipotent Presidency.

In explaining why power was to be disseminated among the three branches of government, Madison wrote, in Federalist No. 51, that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Thus far, the Senate majority’s stance on impeachment can more aptly be described as ambition emboldened by deference. Schiff underscored this problem last week, when he told the senators, “You know you can’t trust this President to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before. He’ll do it for the next several months. He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.” An acquittal would set a precedent for a U.S. President to invite foreign intervention in one election, demand it in a subsequent election, and remain in power nonetheless. Earlier this month, it was reported that Russian military hackers had attacked Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that is at the center of the impeachment debacle. It’s reasonable to suspect that they may have been looking for information that could be helpful to Trump’s reëlection effort.

There is a contrast that Bannon could not have envisioned four years ago. Jackson’s reputation was made when, as a general, he defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, in the War of 1812. He was revered for his willingness to protect the nation from hostile foreign powers. No such claim can be made for Trump. His Presidency has rendered the country more susceptible to them. ♦