Trump’s impeachment hearings are being frustrated by extreme partisanship – he could survive this

Editorial: Opening statements from Democratic chair Adam Schiff and Republican Devin Nunes have already demonstrated that party lines will primarily guide these proceedings

Even the great American historian Arthur Schlesinger once said: “The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.”

That is indeed so and, whatever path the present impeachment of Donald Trump takes, it will be a political punishment for the president.

Even from the early evidence, it is apparent that Mr Trump applied the “transactional” approach of the businessman to his official dealings, as the chief executive of the United States, with the president of Ukraine. Old habits die hard, it may be said, but in such high office it has proved a bad habit as well.

The issue facing the Senate, as it turns itself into the quasi-courtroom in these initial hearings, is a straightforward one. The impression, to put it gently, is that Mr Trump wanted a favour, a quid pro quo, of an improper political nature in return for the United States aiding the security of Ukraine. Did he want, in particular, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky to dig some dirt on Joe Biden’s son Hunter, to gain some advantage in the 2020 presidential election?

There is much more to it than that, of course. As it is a legal rather than a political process (though that too), perhaps it might be said that the use of tax dollars rather than Mr Trump’s own money meant it was not as corrupt and unconstitutional as it appeared? Was there in fact a quid pro quo when the process was aborted before the “deal” could be sealed or completed? To what extent are the witnesses credible?

Such questions will occupy many hours of proceedings and many documents and many judicial wranglings over the coming months. As Richard Nixon, one subject of an intended impeachment, observed, it is a “necessarily difficult” process – it ought not to be too easy to eject a president who has won a direct mandate of the people. So Trump-haters and political nerds can look forward to a Brexit-style feast of fraught, technical, divisive and unending punditry and debate.

From now until election day in 2020, the Trump administration will be distracted by these proceedings. With his wayward and wilful ways, the president will not be able to simply ignore them. Temperamentally, he will be unable to help himself from responding (via Twitter) to every casual insult or unworthy allegation levelled at himself and his behaviour. He will indeed feel as though he is being punished by his political enemies, and a punishment it will prove.

It may not be as electorally damaging to the president’s re-election as some hope or believe, however. In a parallel with the UK’s people-versus-parliament election, the impeachment process can be painted to the Trump “base” as a vindictive campaign by a Washington elite to frustrate the president from delivering his pledges to the American people in 2016 – the wall, protectionism, a trade war with China and all the rest of it.

For many Trump supporters he can do no wrong, and any and every allegation levelled against him will be dismissed as some politically-driven conspiracy with the mainstream media – “fake news”. For some, it will merely confirm that President Trump is still on their side, and the president (like Boris Johnson on this side of the water) can blame congress for any failure to deliver his impossible dreams.

That said, there is no mistaking the partisan flavour of these proceedings. Opening statements from Democratic chair Adam Schiff and the ranking Republican Devin Nunes amply demonstrated the party lines that will guide these proceedings much more than the niceties of constitutional interpretation. For the Democrats, the impeachment means they can prove that Mr Trump is corrupt; for the Republicans, it shows that the Democrats are ready to abuse and misuse any constitutional process to get at Mr Trump, and unfairly.

In the end, that extreme partisanship will prevent the impeachment proceedings, if they get that far, from throwing Mr Trump out of office. Without Republican support, there will never be the two-thirds majority required to find the president guilty of anything, and have him replaced by vice president Mike Pence. That is not, in any case, the intended punishment; the punishment is the damage it will do to Mr Trump’s already fragile public appeal. But it will not be enough, on its own, to see Mr Trump out of power by the end of next year, through whatever process. If Mr Trump manages to win again in 2020, and make some more gains in the Senate and House of Representatives, he will have some punishments of his own to mete out.