Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Cleaning up debris strewn across the floor of the rotunda in the early hours of Thursday
There’s an old saying that the good Lord looks after fools, small children, and the United States of America. The Almighty must have decided this one on points, as two out of three. Since 2017, the United States has been run by fools.
The invasion of the Capitol was no aberration. It was a culmination, a logical conclusion. And though Trump, deserted by Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, having cost Republicans control of the Senate, and even having been blocked by Twitter, finally said he would accept the results, the man is insane and there is no telling what he will do next. Thirteen days is an agonizingly long time.
There are four possible end-game scenarios. The worst is for Trump to stay in office, and wreak more havoc. The best is for Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment on grounds that the president is insane, put it to a quick vote in Congress, where it would pass, and have Trump carried out in a net.
Impeachment would be a just outcome but a more complex process, and time is of the essence.
Another possibility is for Trump to resign and beg Pence’s pardon. If Trump truly has accepted that it’s over, he has to be worrying about how to keep his sorry tush out of prison.
The paramount need is to get Trump out, one way or another.
Pence is now in a curious position. He has been a hack all of his career; and as vice president he has loyally served Trump as First Toady. But this week, Pence seems to have discovered his inner constitutionalist and behaved like a leader.
It would be a pleasure to see Pence in Biden’s limo, heading down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol for the inauguration, and congratulating the new president.
First, he told Trump he would not play the game of refusing to certify the Electoral College results. Then he went public with that declaration.
Yesterday, he seems to have been the one who took operational control in a moment of anarchy and reversed the Pentagon’s initial refusal to authorize the dispatch of the DC National Guard to relieve the besieged Kapitol Keystone Kops.
Pence’s ostensibly principled stands, however, are complicated by his political calculations. He’d like to be the nominee in 2024, and his actions have not endeared him to the Trump diehards. Invoking the 25th Amendment and forcing Trump out of office would burn that bridge forever.
But Pence must know that he is already cooked with the Trump base. So he might as well go down, in a historical footnote, as a late-bloomer Profile in Courage who served as the 46th president for a perilous week, and allowed for a normal transition of power.
It would be a pleasure to see Pence in Biden’s limo, heading down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol for the inauguration, and congratulating the new president. If the outgoing president is Trump, he will be sulking at a golf course.
Given yesterday’s overwhelming vote to certify Biden’s victory, and the widespread disgust with Trump’s incitement of a mob to defile of the Capitol, and the growing support for Trump’s removal even by business leaders, a resolution to oust Trump via the 25th Amendment would surely pass both houses.
And speaking of the Capitol Police, there is a great deal still to be investigated. One of the many disgusting spectacles yesterday, as mob rule played out on live TV, was the picture of small groups of Capitol Police, hanging around in small, cowering clusters, basically loitering, while Trump’s storm troopers had their way with the Capitol.
It’s clear that someone made the tactical decision, once the mob invaded the Capitol, that the police lacked the numbers to expel them by force, and that the priority had to be the safe evacuation of members of the House and Senate.
But that conclusion begs the question of why police were not prepared to block the invasion in the first place. Countless commentators have compared yesterday’s welcome mat for white thugs, who had announced in advance their intention to commit mayhem, with the excessive use of force used by multiple police forces against a peaceful march by Black Lives Matter.
One meme defines white privilege as being able to invade the U.S. Capitol without being shot.
Once the cavalry showed up around 5:00 p.m., in the form of DC’s competent Metropolitan Police Force, it took police only about 45 minutes to establish a secure perimeter and clear the Capitol area. The question, which will doubtless be subject of investigations, is why the DC police were not called to reinforce the outnumbered Capitol Police before the invasion rather than after.
Was this the result of White House meddling? Was it covert sympathy on the part of some Capitol Police with the Trump mob (one cop actually took a selfie with an invader)? Or sheer incompetence and confusion over which police had jurisdiction?
When I worked at the Senate, the Capitol Police, a largely patronage force, was famously incompetent, one cut above rent-a-cops. They seem be skilled mainly at operating metal detectors and drinking coffee.
This disgraceful chapter will be over soon, but not soon enough. And Trump needs to be ousted before he does something even crazier.
There is so much to look forward to in a Biden presidency, beginning with the passage of a massive relief package as part of the budget resolution, now that Democrats have taken the Senate. For myself, the thing I’m most looking forward to is a president who does not communicate with the American people by tweets.
