A12 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14 , 2019
HOUSE IMPEACHMENT HEARINGS
shortcomings, not his manage-
ment of U.S. policy.
In both the Nixon and Clinton
cases, the nation was working
through cultural divisions that
first emerged in the 1960s as
American society cleaved over ba-
sic questions: Who counts as an
American? What’s right in love
and sex? What authorities de-
serve trust in a fast-changing
world?
“The effort to exorcise the de-
mons of the 1960s has been going
on for 30 years,” the historian
Jackson Lears said in 1998. “The
impeachment is the latest act of
the psychodrama.”
Two more decades into the
American story, there’s little sign
that the exorcism has been com-
pleted. The battles continue
about power and sex and identity
and whose values shall govern.
In the impeachment saga of
2019 and the election faceoff of
2020, the issues that lie at the root
of American division have shifted
somewhat — the nature of truth
and the future of work have
joined the mix — but the essential
questions remain.
As does the divide: Not one
Republican entertained a whis-
per of a doubt about the behavior
of the president on Wednesday.
And not one Democrat signaled
that Trump’s actions had been
anything other than an unaccept-
able breach of trust.
One day more before the storm,
the barometer remained stuck.
[email protected]all right.”
Even as the Senate select com-
mittee on Watergate launched its
hearings, it was not clear where
the proceedings were heading. “If
you like to watch grass grow, you
would have loved the opening
yesterday,” The Washington Post’s
Jules Witcover wrote on Page One
of this newspaper on May 18,
1973.
But the first day of hearings
convinced some that an endgame
was in sight. The Post’s Sally
Quinn wrote that “it seemed more
like a public hanging.” Spectators
in the hearing room traded exam-
ples of the gallows humor that
already surrounded Nixon: “Did
you hear the new song, ‘Bail to the
Chief ?’ ”
During the Clinton impeach-
ment, there were no public com-
mittee hearings. But the full
House began considering the
matter in December 1998 amid a
flurry of revelations about extra-
marital affairs among members
of Congress — so many that quip-
sters talked about creating a con-
gressional Adulterers Caucus.
That debate took place as much
of the country’s attention was
focused on Operation Desert Fox,
the four-day bombing of Iraq.
Neon-green night photography of
falling bombs dominated home
TV screens. By the time the House
voted to impeach Clinton, a huge
majority of Americans had con-
cluded that however sordid the
president’s behavior had been,
the case was about his personalcounterpart was a big deal. When
a CBS News poll asked Americans
this month whether Trump’s
dealings with Ukraine were typi-
cal of how presidents work with
foreign countries, 42 percent said
Trump’s acts were “the kind of
thing most presidents probably
do,” while 58 percent said he
acted in a way that “few or no
other presidents have.”
While in Washington impeach-
ment groupies held viewing par-
ties and wore their “Schiff Hap-
pens” T-shirts, much of the rest of
the nation seemed to be mulling
whether sneaking peeks at the
doings in a Capitol Hill hearing
room was essential to their lives.
On Google, searches for “im-
peachment” topped the trending
charts for much of the day, but the
volume didn’t come close to the
previous day’s leader: a nation-
wide quest for information re-
garding Sonic the Hedgehog, the
video game character that is get-
ting its own ad ven ture movie next
year.
When Nixon and Clinton faced
impeachment debates, the inves-
tigations into their behavior
played a vital role in shifting or
solidifying public opinion.
Many voters were unmoved by
the Watergate scandal until a
parade of witnesses laid out in
numbing detail the sordid and
cynical schemes cooked up by
Nixon and his aides. Just before
the hearings began, first lady Pat
Nixon said she still had “complete
faith that everything’s going to bewould be folly,” said acting am-
bassador William B. Taylor Jr.,
who, the nation learned, was
No. 5 in his class at West Point.
By contrast, the Republican
questioners deployed the presi-
dent’s brand of sensational rheto-
ric, speaking of “shams” and “star
chambers” and “the corrupt me-
dia.”
The stylistic contrast between
witnesses and questioners spoke
volumes about the changes
Trump has brought to Washing-
ton. The president promised to
disrupt American government
just as he had American politics,
and here were woolly men with
many decades of diplomatic expe-
rience talking about policy and
principle in long, elegant sen-
tences, explaining how Ukraine
fits in with nearly 250 years of
American cooperation with for-
eign allies.
“Support of Ukraine’s success... fits squarely into our strategy
for central and Eastern Europe
since the fall of the Wall 30 years
ago this past week,” said Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State
George Kent.
The contrast could be charac-
terized as serious policy discus-
sion vs. lurid tabloid talk — or
“deep state” defensiveness vs.
plainspeaking. Which lens voters
choose may guide their decision
about whom to vote for next year
as president.
Public opinion hasn’t settled
into any consensus about wheth-
er Trump’s call with his Ukrainian
“Welcome to Year Four of the
Trump impeachment,” said Rep.
Chris Stewart (Utah), one of sev-
eral Republicans who dismissed
the inquiry as a partisan witch
hunt.
Breitbart News, a dependably
pro-Trump site, dubbed the pro-
ceedings “boring,” the same term
that White House press secretary
Stephanie Grisham deployed. She
tweeted that “this sham hearing
is not only boring, it is a colossal
waste of taxpayer time & money.”
Nunes characterized Trump’s
July 25 call with Ukrainian Presi-
dent Volodymyr Zelensky — the
spark that lit the impeachment
fire — as “a pleasant exchange
between two leaders who discuss
mutual cooperation over a range
of issues.”
Trump took his version of the
high road, saying at a news con-
ference with Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan that “I
hear it’s a joke... I’d much rather
focus on peace in the Middle
East.”
Although the hearing’s wit-
nesses and questioners all collect
paychecks that say “United States
of America” at the top, it seemed
at times as if they worked in
different industries. During 5^1 / 2
hours of testimony, the diplomats
offered a rolling civics lesson on
why an obscure country on the
other side of the world matters to
Americans.
“Ukraine is important for our
national security and we should
support it — not to provide thatUkraine to launch into former
vice president Joe Biden and his
son Hunter.
The first public step in an
impeachment process that seems
likely to flow well into the new
year and the 2020 presidential
primary season took place with
Trump down the street in the
Oval Office, where, he said later in
the day, “I haven’t watched for
one minute.”
Even as the hearing’s spotlight
stayed fixed on Trump — his
phone calls, his policy shifts, his
quest to find usable dirt about a
leading Democratic rival — the
possible removal of the president
seemed to lack the potency and
gravity of previous impeach-
ments.
Committee members largely
steered clear of the kind of dark
oratory that launched impeach-
ment debates in 1973 and 1998,
when the possible removal of
Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton
occasioned speeches about the
country’s perilous politics and
damaged psyche.
Trump’s remarkable ability to
skate through crises that wreck
other people’s lives — bankrupt-
cies of his businesses, abandoned
projects, divorces and accusa-
tions of sexual misbehavior —
seemed again to be at work.
The president’s defenders in
politics and the media projected a
determined “nothing to see here”
vibe.
MOMENT FROM A
Contrast between witnesses, politicians shows Trump’s e≠ect on Washington
BY GREG JAFFE
To the Democrats in the im-
peachment hearing room, Presi-
dent Trump was a corrupt leader
who had manipulated American
foreign policy to undercut a politi-
cal rival and serve his personal
ends.
To the Republicans in the room,
Trump was an unconventional
leader taking on unelected bu-
reaucrats who dismissed his legit-
imate grievances and sought to
undermine his foreign policy
aims.
The historic impeachment
hearings that opened Wednesday
were ostensibly about the facts of
the now infamous 30-minute call
on July 25 in which Trump
pressed Ukrainian President Vo-
lodymyr Zelensky to open investi-
gations that would damage for-
mer vice president Joe Biden and
benefit Trump’s 2020 reelection
campaign.
But the hearing Wednesday bore
the unmistakable echo of fights
that have divided the country since
the day Trump delivered his “Amer-
ican carnage” inauguration speech
from the steps of the Capitol and
opened the doors of the Trump
International Hotel to foreign lead-
ers and lobbyists seeking favors
from Washington.
In the first weeks of the Ukraine
scandal, Republicans largely fell
into line with Trump’s view that
his call with Zelensky had been
“perfect,” before edging away,
amid hours of damaging testimo-
ny, and arguing that the call was
problematic but far from im-
peachable.
On Wednesday, the country’s
political leaders returned to the
spot where they always seem to
go. Once again, lawmakers were
trying to untangle Trump’s self-
interest from the broader nation-
al interest of the country he was
elected to serve. At issue was the
fundamental question of Trump’s
presidency: Was his norm-break-
ing a betrayal of his oath of office
or his right as the commander in
chief?
Long before the first question
was asked at the day-long hearing,
it was clear that most in the room
had made up their minds.
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.)
described an “odious” scheme
hatched by Trump and his allies to
use desperately needed U.S. mili-
tary aid as leverage to force
Ukraine’s new president to dig up
dirt on Trump’s political rival. “Is
that what Americans should now
expect from their president?”
Schiff asked. “If that is not im-
peachable conduct, what is?”
His Republican counterpart
and fellow Californian, Devin
Nunes, insisted that the real
wrongs were committed by an
“outraged bureaucracy” that re-
sented Trump’s “America First”
foreign policy, his loathing of for-
eign aid and his dismissal this
Is the president’s norm-breaking also lawbreaking?
Clash over key question
echoes nation’s division
since Trump’s ascentspring of one of their own, a career
Foreign Service officer who was
U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
The Democrats greeted their
first two witnesses, who they
hoped would set the tone for the
months of debate that will follow,
as devoted, nonpartisan patriots
who had spent their careers serv-
ing the national interest. William
B. Taylor Jr., the senior U.S. diplo-
mat in Ukraine, recounted a pro-
fessional life that began with a
bloody stint as an infantry officer
in Vietnam and included periods
as a diplomat in Iraq and Afghani-
stan.
George Kent, a deputy assistant
secretary of state, described his
father’s service as a submariner
and his devotion to the country’s
national interests as defined by
Republicans and Democrats since
the end of World War II.
“A Europe truly whole, free and
at peace... is not possible without
a Ukraine whole, free and at
peace,” he said.
In a notable break with tradi-
tion, Nunes didn’t thank the two
witnesses for their decades of ser-
vice to the nation, but rather
sought to condemn them for it. By
his reckoning, bureaucrats in the
FBI, CIA and the State Depart-
ment had manufactured the Rus-
sia collusion scandal and accusa-
tions of obstruction of justice that
marred the first half of Trump’s
presidency. Now the same “politi-cized bureaucracy” was at it again.
“You’ve been cast in the low-
rent Ukrainian sequel,” he told the
two witnesses.
There wasn’t much argument
over the facts, which were cap-
tured in the rough transcript of
the president’s call, dozens of text
messages between his aides and
Taylor’s detailed timeline, which
he composed from notes that he
had taken during the course of his
duties.
Daniel S. Goldman, the Demo-
crats’ counsel, focused on a me-
thodical inquiry, sketching out
the timeline under which Taylor
and Kent learned about the pres-
sure campaign to extract political
favors from the Ukrainians in ex-
change for an Oval Office visit for
Zelensky and $391 million of mili-
tary aid.
Goldman asked Taylor to ex-
plain the meaning of specific
words that Gordon Sondland, a
Trump donor turned diplomat,
used to outline terms of the deal
for the Ukrainians and their
American interlocutors.
“What did he mean by ‘every-
thing’ ” Goldman asked, referring
to Sondland.
“The security assistance and
the White House meeting,” Taylor
replied.
Goldman summed up the testi-
mony, “Whether it’s a quid pro
quo, bribery, extortion, abuse of
power of the office of the presi-dency, the fact of the matter... is
that security assistance and the
White House meeting were not
going to be provided unless
Ukraine initiated these two inves-
tigations that would benefit Don-
ald Trump’s reelections?”
“Is that what you understood
the facts to be?” he asked.
“That was the implication,” Tay-
lor replied. “That was certainly
the implication.”
Stephen R. Castor, the Republi-
cans’ primary questioner, used his
time with the two witnesses to
explain Trump’s mind-set and cast
the two longtime diplomats as
unsympathetic and unresponsive
to Trump’s concerns as command-
er in chief.
Castor read the witnesses
quotes from Ukrainian officials,
as captured in a 2017 Politico arti-
cle, disparaging Trump as a candi-
date and a leader.
“Certainly that is giving rise to
[the idea] that some elements of
the Ukrainian establishment
were out to get the president,”
Castor asked. “And that’s a reason-
able belief of his, correct?”
At this assertion both witnesses
were largely speechless.
“I don’t know the exact nature
of the president’s concerns,” Tay-
lor said.
In Castor’s version of the
Ukraine story, Trump was holding
the line against hopelessly cor-
rupt Ukrainian politicians, andtheir oligarchical patrons, who
had opposed him in 2016 and
were now seeking to take advan-
tage of America’s wealth and
goodwill. Castor spoke of “endem-
ic” Ukrainian corruption and in-
quired about Burisma, the gas
company that appointed Biden’s
son Hunter to a lucrative position
on its board in late 2014.
Kent, who was serving at the
U.S. Embassy in Kyiv at the time,
said he raised concerns about
Hunter Biden’s role with the vice
president’s office. But he batted
down any suggestions that Hunt-
er Biden’s position on the Burisma
board had protected the company
from U.S. scrutiny or influenced
the former vice president.
Vice President Biden’s role was
“critically important,” Kent testi-
fied. “It was top cover for us to
pursue our policy agenda.”
And for the two witnesses and
the Democrats in the hearing
room, that policy agenda, execut-
ed on a bipartisan basis, was noth-
ing short of sacrosanct. It involved
repelling Russian aggression,
safeguarding borders and sup-
porting Ukraine in its “fight for
the cause of freedom,” Kent said
“How does this affect our na-
tional security,” Schiff asked.
“It affects the world we live in,
that our children and grandchil-
dren will grow up in,” Taylor re-
plied. “This affects the kind of
world we want to see [and] ournational interests very directly.
Ukraine is on the front line of that
conflict.”
The Republicans, meanwhile,
sought to defend a president’s pre-
rogative to define the nation’s in-
terests as he or she sees fit. By this
measure, the president’s actions
were far less important than the
motives of his accusers, including
the anonymous CIA whistleblow-
er whose complaint started the
impeachment inquiry. Nearly two
months later, most of the facts of
that complaint have been con-
firmed by firsthand sources.
Democrats, including Schiff,
who is the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee, have in-
sisted that the whistleblower’s
testimony is irrelevant to the pro-
ceedings. To the Republicans,
though, the anonymous bureau-
crat remains the central figure in
the narrative.
As the hearing drew to a close,
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) com-
plained that Trump’s supporters
would never get an opportunity to
question the whistleblower
whose complaint launched the
impeachment inquiry.
That prompted a tart Demo-
cratic response.
“I’d be glad to have the person
who started it all come in and
testify,” replied Rep. Peter Welch
(D-Vt). “President Trump is wel-
come to take a seat right there.”
[email protected]MATT MCCLAIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), top left center, speaks as William B. Taylor Jr., the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and State Department
Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent appear Wednesday in the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill for the first day of open impeachment hearings.