Why the House should censure rather than impeach

Fortunately, there is a third option that is much less bad than the other two. Rather than impeach Trump, the Democratic majority in the House can pass a resolution censuring the president for asking a foreign power to investigate a political opponent. That is a sure thing, as it only requires a majority vote in the Democrat-controlled House. It also has the virtue of appealing to the common sense of most Americans. Approximately 70 percent of the American people believe Donald Trump made a mistake by mentioning the Bidens when asking the newly elected president of Ukraine to investigate corruption, but roughly half of Americans also believe that his misstep was not serious enough to justify his removal from office. Even Hillary Clinton concedes that a general request to Ukraine to investigate corruption without specifically naming a political opponent would have been okay.

Stu Eizenstat, a wise, experienced statesman who was President Carter’s White House domestic policy adviser and later ambassador to the European Union under President Clinton, among a host of many other important positions in government, has been quietly urging his Democratic colleagues in the House to censure, rather than impeach, the president. That would send a clear message that recruiting a foreign power to “dig up dirt” on a political opponent is unacceptable, but it would impose a sanction that is more proportional to the transgression than removal from office. Censure does not require Senate action and thus avoids a Senate trial that will almost certainly exonerate Trump while taking up oxygen from the Democratic presidential primary race. Censure might even attract some bipartisan support.