This is a big change. When President Richard Nixon misused the CIA to try to squelch an investigation into the Watergate break-in, some members of Congress and others didn’t think he should be impeached or removed for it—but virtually no one argued that his conduct was “totally appropriate,” a “nothing burger,” or consistent with the president’s constitutional duties. Likewise, when President Bill Clinton lied under oath about his conduct with Monica Lewinsky, many people thought it wasn’t the stuff of impeachment, let alone removal, and some people went so far as to sympathize with the president or to argue that his conduct didn’t meet the definition of perjury. But virtually no one argued that actual deliberate falsehoods under oath would have been proper.
Yet that’s effectively where we find ourselves now—confronted with a president, and some of his defenders, who would insist that abuses of presidential authority are unexceptional or, worse still, consistent with the president’s constitutional oath and duty.
In the long run, this defense of Trump’s Ukraine machinations may well prove more corrosive than what occurred in the July 25 conversation itself. The president, after all, continues to serve in office and—as the phone call with the Australian prime minister demonstrates—is likely to continue to engage in further self-serving activity with foreign dignitaries as the election approaches. More upsetting still, we’re perilously close to the point at which there may no longer be a national consensus that there’s anything constitutionally problematic about using governmental powers to advance one’s own pecuniary and electoral interests.
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