The Washington Post - 23.08.2019

FRIDAY, AUGUST 23 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

FRIDAY Opinion

T

he world is full of catastrophe,

along with a sense that dark

clouds of impending recession

are massing on the horizon.

Congress, though, is on recess. The

exception is the House Judiciary Com-

mittee, which has come back early,

most prominently, to draft gun-

control bills. It also continues its

quiet, important work exploring

whether the president of the United

States should be impeached.

Despite the world’s turbulence, we

all need to keep a steady focus on how

Congress answers the very precise,

narrow questions that former special

counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report

put on the table.

First, did President Trump commit

a crime? And if he did, is it a “high

crime,” or is it instead a crime that we

can overlook (such as joyriding) with-

out damaging the rule of law and the

Constitution? More specifically, did he

commit or attempt to commit obstruc-

tion of justice — for an attempt would

also be a crime.

Second, has the president met his

constitutional requirement to exercise

the powers of office “faithfully”? To

understand the original meaning of

“faithfully,” Mueller’s team cited a

1755 dictionary written by Samuel

Johnson that defines the term as “strict

adherence to duty and allegiance.”

These are legal questions. They are

narrow and precise. Often, those who

have come out for impeachment have

instead used the sweeping argument

that the president is unfit for office, as

Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) did when he

put forward articles of impeachment

in July. The job, though, is to keep the

focus on the narrow questions.

Impeachment was designed to

address actions either already crimi-

nalized or prohibited by the Constitu-

tion. It is a process that puts decisions

usually made by prosecutors and judg-

es in the hands, respectively, of the

House and Senate. We do not want our

judicial mechanisms to be used for

broad questions of whether someone

is unfit for a particular role. Trump’s

fitness for office, or lack thereof, is an

important question, but it is for voters

to decide.

In contrast, legal questions, such as

those asked by the special counsel’s

report, on the basis of a comprehen-

sive review of the evidence, must be

answered by those procedurally

responsible for answering them: the

members of the House of Representa-

tives.

Happily, the House is moving for-

ward with its constitutional obliga-

tions. The Judiciary Committee has

publicly affirmed that it is conducting

an impeachment inquiry. Last week,

the committee subpoenaed Corey

Lewandowski, Trump’s former cam-

paign manager, and Rick Dearborn, a

former campaign aide and White

House deputy chief of staff for policy,

to give public testimony on Sept. 17, as

the committee moves forward with its

“investigation into obstruction, cor-

ruption and abuse of power by Trump

and his associates.” The committee is

asking the right questions — the

narrow, legal ones.

Yes, these legal questions have po-

litical implications. What about those?

If the House were to indict, through

the procedure of passing articles of

impeachment, is the Senate not un-

likely to convict? And is there any

probability of impeachment hearings

reaching completion before the

2020 election? Indeed, it is unlikely

that Trump would be removed from

office by this process. That does not,

though, erase Congress’s constitution-

al duty to complete the inquiry and

decide whether the evidence requires

an indictment in the form of articles of

impeachment.

What hangs on this process is the

all-important question of whether our

laws and Constitution have any mean-

ing. They have meaning only if we act

on them. If we do not, our legal system

ceases to have authority and legitima-

cy. If we care to consider obstruction

of justice illegal, and if we care that

presidents execute the laws faithfully,

then we have no choice but to demand

that the responsible officials bring this

process to conclusion by rendering a

legal judgment — not a political

judgment — on whether the evidence

requires impeachment.

If Congress can keep itself to nar-

row, legal questions, then the political

consequences of this process will be

minimal. Congress will have upheld

the rule of law and receive credit for

doing so. It will have left the question

of fitness for office to voters and can

say so clearly and emphatically.

What voters need is for the respon-

sible party — the House of Representa-

tives — to answer the legal questions

now on the table.

Danielle Allen is a political theorist at

Harvard University and a contributing

columnist for The Post.

DANIELLE ALLEN

Questions

for the

impeachment

hearings

H

istorians studying the Trump

presidency will have a prodi-

gious amount of digital

material that demands exami-

nation but defies explanation. The presi-

dent’s Aug. 21, half-hour, South Lawn

media availability deserves to be at the

top of that list.

With the whir of a helicopter engine

in the background, President Trump

veered from topic to topic with utter

confidence, alarming ignorance, mini-

mal coherence and relentless duplicity.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, he

said, “made a living on outsmarting

President Obama” — even though it is

Trump who now urges a Russian return

to the Group of Seven summit without

any concessions on Putin’s part.

On pursuing the trade war with

China, Trump called himself the “chosen

one.” This came within hours of tweeting

a quote that he is loved like “the second

coming of God.” At some point, arro-

gance is so extreme and delusional that

it can only be expressed in blasphemy.

Trump accused the Danish prime

minister of “blowing off the United

States” because she scorned his own

balmy, offensive musings on the future

of Greenland. “We treat countries with

respect,” he said — except, presumably,

the “shithole” ones.

Trump’s new immigration rule, he

claimed, would “do even more” to bring

migrant families together — though this

togetherness, he failed to mention,

would come by allowing the indefinite

detention of migrant families.

“I am the least racist person ever to

serve in office,” said the man who is

increasingly bold in his use of racist

tropes.

He joked again about being in office

10 or 14 years from now — appealing to

people who find overturning the consti-

tutional order a laugh riot.

“Mental health,” Trump went on.

“Very important.” Hard to argue with

that one.

“Our Second Amendment will remain

strong,” Trump promised, while pre-

viewing an effort to overturn that por-

tion of the 14th Amendment guarantee-

ing birthright citizenship. Some parts of

the Constitution, clearly, are more con-

stitutional than others.

Trump pledged the return of thou-

sands of captured Islamic State fighters

to Europe, one way or another. “If

Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no

choice but to release them in the coun-

tries from which they came, which is

Germany, France and other places.” Did

the president of the United States just

threaten to release dangerous terrorists

on the streets of our closest allies?

Evidently.

Of the wounded and grieving families

Trump visited following recent mass

shootings: “The love for me,” he boasted,

“and my love for them was unparal-

leled.” And this was demonstrated by

“hundreds and hundreds of people all

over the floor.” No one draws a bigger

crowd in an intensive care unit.

After repeating an anti-Semitic trope

about the disloyalty of Jews who vote

Democratic, Trump insisted to a report-

er, “It’s only anti-Semitic in your head.”

But control over the plain meaning of

English words is not a presidential

power. And the charge of disloyalty is

the essence of anti-Semitism.

Seldom in presidential history has

more nonsense been expressed with

greater concision. Never would the in-

terests of the United States have been

better served by a louder helicopter.

What to make of this? First, the

Trump presidency is not just unfolding,

it is unraveling. All narcissists believe

they are at the center of the universe.

But what happens when a narcissist is

actually placed at the center of the

universe? The “chosen one” happens.

Trump is not just arguing for an alterna-

tive set of policies; he is asserting an

alternative version of reality, in which

resistance to his will is disloyalty to the

country.

Second, the president has systemical-

ly removed from his circle anyone who

finds this appalling. Every president has

the right to advisers who share his basic

worldview. But Trump appears, on many

topics, to have stopped taking advice

altogether. His counselors are now flun-

kies. The proof of their loyalty is not

found in the honesty of their opinions

but in the regurgitation of his insanity.

Third, the president is increasingly

prone to the equation of the national

interest with his personal manias. He is

perfectly willing to threaten relations

with Denmark — or to force the Israeli

government into a difficult choice — if it

serves his tweeted whims. This ap-

proach is more characteristic of person-

al rule than democratic leadership.

Self-worship is inconsistent with true

patriotism.

Trump’s promotion of moral and po-

litical chaos puts other members of his

party in a difficult position. Difficult, but

not complicated. It is their public duty to

say that foolish things are foolish, that

insane things are insane, that bigoted

things are bigoted. On growing evi-

dence, their failure to do so is abetting

the country’s decline into farce.

[email protected]

MICHAEL GERSON

Unhinged

beside the

helicopter

BY ANTHONY KRONMAN

Y

ale University’s Sterling Memo-

rial Library was opened in 1931,

having been built to look

600 years older. Its walls are

decorated with hundreds of stone carv-

ings. Most are benign, a few deliberately

humorous. Two years ago, the university

announced plans to remove one carving

from what it called a “place of honor” to

a neutral setting where, in the words of

Yale’s president, it could be viewed in a

light that would help “all viewers under-

stand” its “meaning” and serve as a

stimulus to “thoughtful consideration

and reflection.”

The carving depicts a Puritan and an

Indian, peering around the column that

separates them. The Indian holds a bow

and shield; the Puritan, a musket. The

musket appears to be aimed at the

Indian, though whether in self-defense

or hostility is impossible to say. Yet, after

consulting with “faculty and other

scholarly experts,” the university con-

cluded that the carving “depicts a scene

of warfare and colonial violence toward

local Native American inhabitants.” The

musket (but not the bow) was cloaked

with a removable stone cover, pending

the carving’s final move to an unspeci-

fied location. Today, a makeshift wood-

en blue box surrounds the carving — a

coverup of the coverup.

The carving hardly occupies a place

of prominence; to call it a “place of

honor” is a stretch. It suggests that Yale

meant to endorse the “colonial vio-

lence” the carving is said to portray —

or meant to do so when the figures were

carved nine decades ago. Neither seems

plausible.

But the real problem goes deeper. The

university’s treatment of the carving

reflects the belief, shared by many

schools, that our college campuses

should be cleansed of names and arti-

facts that awkwardly remind their stu-

dents that others in the past held values

different from their own. Not erased

entirely, as Yale’s president insists the

university is not doing, but taken from

their public places, where students have

to view them as they go about their

rounds, and retired to the anesthetized

precincts of a museum where few, if any,

will see them, and only those who

choose to do so. It is hard to imagine a

more compelling illustration of the

phrase “safe space” that so many stu-

dents and educators now enthusiasti-

cally embrace.

This kind of ethical cleansing is bad

for many reasons. One is that it dis-

counts the importance of discomfort in

the process of learning. Discovering

what your conscience demands is the

reward for confronting ideas that shock

it, and maturity is the prize of learning

to live with ambiguity. Another is that it

confirms the wish to have one’s field of

vision seamlessly fit one’s system of

values. It invites the smug belief that a

real problem has been met simply by

removing an irritant from view. A third

is that it reinforces the belief that those

who lived before us were blinded by

prejudices we have thankfully over-

come. But that itself is a prejudice — one

that powerfully shapes campus life in an

age otherwise devoted to the eradica-

tion of prejudice in all its forms.

This trend places moral self-

confidence ahead of the life of the mind,

which is always more than a little dan-

gerous, because that adventure should

put even our firmest convictions at risk.

A university is not a family where love

should rule. It is a community of conver-

sation devoted to the search for truth.

The moral beliefs that students bring to

the conversation must not be allowed to

curtail or confine it. Nor should their

feelings be given the same weight there

that they have around the kitchen table.

But the trend toward ethical cleans-

ing puts our democracy at risk, too.

Our experiment in self-government is

the most ambitious that human beings

have ever undertaken. It is boisterous,

contentious, divisive. To work at all, its

citizens and leaders need to be able to

see their opponents’ views not as the

diabolical expression of wholly malign

forces but as the beliefs of human beings

whose ideas spring from commitments

that even their enemies can partly

acknowledge and perhaps even share.

Our democracy needs what American

jurist Learned Hand called the “spirit of

liberty” and defined as “the spirit that is

not too sure it is right.” It is needed on

both the right and the left. Safe spaces

on campus leave our students ill-

equipped for the unsafe space of our

wonderful but abrasive democracy.

Our students must of course be free

from physical harm. But they must also

be free from the spirit of moral confor-

mity that today represents a danger of a

more insidious kind. When their

schools reinforce the belief that certain

feelings need to be respected at all costs,

and the injustices of the past stored

away in a museum, they reinforce this

spirit. They compromise the life of the

mind. And they enfeeble their students

for the hard work of citizenship that lies

ahead.

Anthony Kronman teaches at Yale Law

School, where he served as dean from 1994

to 2004, and is the author of ”The Assault on

American Excellence.”

Democracy is messy. College

campuses should be, too.

STAN GODLEWSKI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST

The campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn., in April 2018.

BY RAMESH SRINIVASAN

C

onservatives have made it their

mission lately to paint tech com-

panies as liberal opponents whose

mission is to secretly thwart Re-

publicans online. This includes President

Trump, who tweeted this week that

Google had “manipulated from 2.6 million

to 16 million votes for Hillary Clinton in

2016 Election.”

The president, here, is wrong. Not only

is he inaccurately summing up research

on the effects of bias in Google’s search

engine; he is also ignoring some key flaws

in that research. But there’s a troubling

kernel of truth here: Online companies

wield powerful technology that shapes

our beliefs, how we work and how we live.

Their technologies act on all of us, regard-

less of our gender, race, age or political

persuasion.

So while it’s wrong to characterize

Google as part of the Democratic Party

machine, there’s plenty of room to ques-

tion how it’s affecting our democracy and

society.

Trump’s tweet refers to research by

Robert Epstein, an academic psychologist

who testified in Congress in June that

Google helped Hillary Clinton win at least

2.6 million votes in 2016 by serving unde-

cided voters with politically biased search

results. Epstein, who describes himself as

“center-left,” claims that his research from

the 2018 midterms shows that big tech

companies hold the power to control

15 million votes, effectively making “free

and fair election(s) meaningless.”

I have been studying the Internet’s

impact on our political, cultural and eco-

nomic lives across the world for 20 years,

and Epstein is a respected colleague of

mine. We both agree that the digital

systems we use every day are dangerous to

democracy. This is because the voices that

create and monetize them are extremely

limited — paving the way for a few tech

billionaires to create the empires that

monitor us daily, giving them the poten-

tial to manipulate our behavior.

But if we narrow the scope of tech’s

influence to partisan politics, we miss the

larger issue — that the influence of these

systems is profoundly undemocratic. Big

tech’s reach permeates every aspect of our

lives, all the while remaining invisible and

unaccountable.

The allegations against Google ignore

real complexities in the voting process.

For example, Epstein testified that Google

shifted millions of votes from “undecided”

to the Clinton ledger, but could any of us

know for sure that a mere search result is

sufficient to determine a person’s vote? A

liberal skew in search results around

health care might make a voter more

sympathetic toward a Democrat, but it

might be the candidates’ stances on abor-

tion that determine the person’s actual

vote. Epstein’s research didn’t take this

into account.

In addition, how we word our searches

might influence the visibility of conserva-

tive vs. liberal information sources. One

person might search for “terrorist attack”;

another might search for “Islamic terror.”

Wouldn’t this affect what each person

sees?

And, of course, not all activity online

promotes the Democratic cause. As

Trump so often ignores, several entities —

from Cambridge Analytica to the Russian

government — gamed platforms such as

Facebook to support his candidacy. Yes,

Facebook labels certain “news” stories

differently when they come from sponsors

on our feeds, but is there any evidence that

we really noticed the difference?

In truth, the pernicious effect of private,

corporate technology platforms on our

political lives is complex. They are not

cheerleaders for a political party; their

goal is to keep us glued to their sites and

services, all while surveilling us 24/7. They

don’t do this for fun, or necessarily for

political power; they do it because it

makes them billions of dollars.

It’s time to demand transparency and

accountability on our tech platforms, spe-

cifically on what data they collect, why we

see the content we see and how we can

navigate through the morass of informa-

tion they claim to make available to us. We

think we are searching when we log on to

Google, but in fact, the company is search-

ing us. It is surveilling our interests for its

own purposes, and we have no control

over how these technologies influence our

behavior or thinking.

Ultimately, we should remember that at

its infancy, the Internet was funded by

taxpayer money. As private corporations

reap the spoils of this technological mar-

vel, they owe a debt to the public — they

should open themselves up to regulation,

audit and competition. Google, Facebook,

Amazon and other companies can support

democracy by entering into a new social

contract, both to serve the public interest

and to support our own sovereignty as

users. (Amazon founder and CEO Jeff

Bezos also owns The Post.)

Google poses a problem, but not be-

cause it’s a phantom organ of the Demo-

cratic Party. The real issue is that its

mysterious workings — as well as those of

its fellow tech companies — are hidden far

from sight and controlled by a few. It’s

time for a digital bill of rights — one that

ensures that the rest of us and our inter-

ests are part of the Internet’s DNA, as well.

Ramesh Srinivasan is a professor at the

University of California at Los Angeles in the

department of information studies and director

of the UC Digital Cultures Lab. He is author of

the forthcoming book “Beyond the Valley.”

Yes, Google is disrupting our democracy.

But not in the way Trump thinks.