The EconomistNovember 16th 2019 351B
y 8am onNovember 13th, the line to get
into the Ways and Means Committee
room already stretched all the way down
the long hallway, though the hearing was
not scheduled to begin until ten. Cameras
bristled at the building’s entrance. Con-
gressional interns, journalists and politi-
cal junkies jostled for position as if they
were on a crowded train carriage, and po-
lice officers trying to keep a path open grew
increasingly frustrated.
The spectators were waiting to watch a
political drama rarely seen in America. For
nearly two months, Democrats have held
their impeachment inquiry privately.
Those hearings have become public. Over
the next two weeks, Americans will hear
testimony from witnesses concerning the
allegation that President Donald Trump or-
dered military aid to Ukraine to be with-
held until his counterpart, Volodymyr Ze-
lensky, announced an investigation into
Hunter Biden, son of a Democratic presi-
dential front-runner, who served on the
board of a Ukrainian natural-gas firm.These hearings may be the only time
that Americans will get to hear from those
who know most about the allegation. Re-
publicans control the Senate and will vote
on the rules governing a trial there. Unlike
public impeachment hearings for Richard
Nixon, these hearings are not designed to
uncover new information; the witnesses
have already testified in closed sessions.
They are designed to build a case for Mr
Trump’s impeachment, which means they
must meaningfully shift public opinion
about the president. That is not impossi-
ble, but neither does it look likely.A cynical strain of conventional wis-
dom says that nothing moves public opin-
ion of Mr Trump. That is not quite true,
though his approval rating moves in a nar-
rower band than those of past presidents. It
has a low ceiling in part because Mr Trump
has made so little effort to broaden his ap-
peal beyond his base. It has a high floor
partly because he has done an outstanding
job of cultivating that base, partly because
America is deeply polarised and because,
unlike in Nixon’s time, when Democrats
and Republicans read the same newspa-
pers and watched the same three main
news networks, partisans today get their
news from different sources, many of
which exist to confirm viewers’ biases.
But Mr Trump’s approval rating is not
entirely insulated from external events
(see chart on next page). It stood at around
45% when he was inaugurated. His first
few months generated ample headlines—a
chaotic cabinet-filling process, Michael
Flynn’s tenure as national security adviser
and the failure of the first travel ban—but
his rating did not decline until House Re-
publicans introduced the American Health
Care Act, their first effort to repeal Barack
Obama’s Affordable Care Act (aca).
Over the next several months, Mr
Trump’s popularity had an inverse rela-
tionship with that bill’s viability. Whenev-
er it appeared to be dead, or dropped out of
the news cycle, his rating rose; when Re-
publicans revived their efforts to repeal theThe Ukraine scandalTeflon Don
WASHINGTON, DC
Democrats want impeachment hearings to change the public’s view of Donald
Trump. That will be difficultUnited States
36 Sealing criminal records
37 The economy
38 Public radio
38 History in the Mississippi Delta
40 Lexington: Trump and ErdoganAlso in this section