Americans who supported McConnell can be counted on to back him now if Senate Republicans decide that bogus articles of impeachment do not merit the Senate’s sustained attention. Peremptory dismissal — think of it as a motion for summary judgment — would serve future presidents of both parties even if it would deny Trump the high-profile political theater he delights in and almost invariably has succeeded in dominating since he came down the escalator. I’d love to see a competent defense team unravel Russiagate or Spygate or whatever you call the last three years of guerrilla political war waged by “the Resistance.”

But the price of defining “high crimes and misdemeanors” down is steep. “That which gets rewarded gets repeated” is far more than a cliche, it’s an iron law of politics. If House Democrats succeed — in their own eyes and the eyes of their base — in getting the Senate to infuse their Star Chamber proceedings with respectability, then future House majorities have a road map for their own vendettas (and fundraising machines). If McConnell embraces “the Reid Rule” again — the Senate majority makes the Senate’s rules and can change them whenever it cares to, named for the senator who first used it (to pack the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2013) — he can guide the Constitution to a safe if not soft landing. Again.

If he does so, McConnell will be assailed by Democrats and their Manhattan-Beltway media elite annex. Again. But the leader will have done the Constitution a great service. Again.