Abuse of Power, Inside the Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump, by by Fred V. Lucas

 

Abuse of Power

In bygone days, I got my news from weekly magazines. Newspapers and the nightly news were too nerve-wracking. If I was still kicking and my assets remained intact, week-old news didn’t scare me. Flash forward a couple decades and we’re awash in an unrelenting stream of news that comes pockmarked with commentary from every Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Nowadays, understanding the implications of news is daunting, thoughtful analysis impossible. Something happens, and in near-light speed, it’s replaced by something new. Memories are garbled, strains of connectivity lost, and narratives spun so fast that they look like a host of dust devils.

With Abuse of Power, Lucas has provided us a service by neatly depicting President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. A careful follower of the news may not discover much they hadn’t already known, but reading these political clashes without the chaff helps connect the dots. Lucas takes a mostly non-judgmental view of the players; however, we get to see their words and deeds in sequence without the noise. Motives held close to the vest suddenly become noticeable. I suspect that politicians who prefer obfuscation will dislike this book.

Abuse of Power might disappoint those who prefer their politics presented in polemic rants. This book is a straightforward presentation of events told in sequence without the distraction of spin or unassociated news. Speculation and gossip seldom make an appearance. If it couldn’t be attributed, Lucas left it out.

Abuse of Power allows the reader to form their own opinion. How refreshing is that?

Here’s an idea on how to fix Congress!

My grandson graduated from middle-school, so I’ve been in New York City for the last week. My visits are always fun because my three New York grandchildren will have it no other way. Sometimes we get time to do something other than attend school events, sport games, and dance recitals. Yesterday, I met an old friend from Arizona for lunch. Michael E. Newton wrote Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years and other nonfiction history books. Hamilton, of course, played a major role in Tempest at Dawn, so despite my emphasis on fiction, we developed a friendship based on a shared love of history.

After discussing book marketing, writing projects, and American history anecdotes, Michael shared a modern-day political idea that has shown some recent popularity. A congressperson today represents an average of 710,000 people. When we adopted the Constitution, each member represented no more than thirty thousand people. Michael suggested that we return to an upper limit of thirty thousand constituents. I laughed. That would make the United States Congress as large as the Star Wars Imperial Senate. I told Michael I didn’t want to pay taxes for a building large enough to hold so many representatives. He asked why they needed to be in a single building? In fact, why did they need to be in Washington D.C at all?

The intent of this movement is to make the House of Representatives once again answerable to the people.  If congresspersons remained in their districts and participated electronically with Congress as a whole, then they would be surrounded by their constituents rather than lobbyists and the House leadership. Further, if a congressperson only represented thirty thousand citizens, individuals would have more personal contact with their representative and greater influence over legislation. If we could pull this off, we would decrease the power of lobbyists and the establishment by geographically decentralizing the House, while increasing the power of the people by making their representative a neighbor. 

An additional benefit is that staff salaries and office expenses would siphon money out of the richest zip codes in America and disperse it to the hinterlands, from where it came in the first place. I count that as win/win.

Are there negatives? Of course. The senate would undoubtedly be further captured by lobbyists, the media, and party apparatchiki. They’ll probably even become haughtier, if that’s possible. But wait, there’s more. We could send senators out to state environs, as well. Maybe we require them to work in the state capital, maybe even the capitol itself. The Framers wanted the Senate to protect the states, and this might move us closer to the Framers’ vision. Although senators would remain popularly elected, proximity to local politicians would provide the states with additional influence over their prima donnas.

The whole idea is a pipe dream, but an intriguing pipe dream nonetheless. Maybe we could bribe them to go along by doubling their salary. It would be a bargain at twice the price.

Read my essay at Constituting America on the personal price of serving in Congress.

Ryan Cooper writes "America's Constitution is terrible"

Ryan Cooper has an opinion piece in The Week with the provocative title, "America's Constitution is terrible. Let's throw it out and start over."

He starts by saying, " The American Constitution is an outdated, malfunctioning piece of junk — and it's only getting worse."

What's wrong, you say? Well, that damned parchment is interfering with him and his cohorts from governing in the fashion they believe best for all of us. How will we ever turn the United States into a European country with that odious “piece of junk” in the way?

He has a prescription, of course. As the intellectual equal of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, et al, Cooper defines five brilliant changes to our countries most sacred document.

1. Get rid of the Senate filibuster—super majorities are undemocratic
2. Radically change the way House members are elected—gerrymandering is just plain wrong
3. Neuter the Senate—too damn much power to low-population states
4. Elect the president from the House—a separately elected president “increases tyranny and undermine democracy”
5. Throw the entire Constitution in the garbage—git rid of the “ancient, janky mechanisms of the American Constitution”