Why your alarmism over Trump is dangerous for democracy

Yet someone as well regarded as legal scholar Eric Posner has made the argument, shared by apparently millions, that Americans should consider new ways, however unprecedented, to remove a president who reaches a certain level of subjective badness. Posner is explicit about this, writing that the president “can be removed, under the conventional understanding of the 25th Amendment, if he is incapacitated by mental or physical illness. But there is no obvious solution for a president who has not committed a crime or been disabled by illness, but has lost the confidence of the public because of a failure of temperament, ideology or ability.”

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The argument amounts to something more simple and sinister: that presidents who express ideologies that we find outside the bounds of acceptability can be removed, despite being democratically elected by voters. Posner is also quite explicit that he is talking about political, not mental, incompetence. The entirely subjective criteria, which could easily be applied to any president going forward, include: “[His] values fall outside the mainstream… he lacks the interest or attention span to inform himself about issues; or he lacks management abilities and is unable to govern effectively.” Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen makes a similarly ideological argument for impeachment that bears no relation to anything the constitution says: “If the president can’t recognize the difference between these domestic terrorists and the people who oppose their anti-American attitudes, then he cannot defend us.”

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