I stole that from Douglas Adams. But this post sort of feels like that, because this post is about an issue with the Constitution.
Recall that, originally, the Constitution called for the winner of the presidential election to be President, and for the second-place finisher to be Vice-President. Presumably, then, President and Vice-President were from different parties.
As a consequence, under that original system, if you impeached (and convicted) a President, then you automatically ceded the Presidency to the opposite party. For example, if the President did crazy stuff via Executive Order, you could impeach, convict, remove, and so stop that.
But now, if they impeach the President, all that does is put another guy in place, to implement the rest of Project 2025. Under these conditions, you cannot use impeachment as a way to slow or halt the implementation of the polices that got the current President impeached.
(Impeach, say, if a great depression occurs, and the Trump tariffs get the blame for triggering it.)
Plausibly, that’s consistent with the “high crimes and misdemeanors” clause. They were thinking of impeachment as a way to remove a single rotten apple, not as a way to implement or (in this case halt) policies.
Conclusion
I guess I keep looking for the off button. The plug that may be pulled. The glass, only to be broken in emergency.
Plausibly, under the original rules, impeachment was a tool that could have been used if the U.S. were headed off a cliff, on the path set by the current President.
But under current rules, that’s no longer true. Impeachment is no longer a tool for getting the U.S. off this path, no matter what happens.
I wonder if the Founding Fathers had any notion of what our current situation would be? Surely they didn’t foresee government by executive order, or the Congress abandoning its legal prerogatives over spending.
Basically, there is no off button. Wherever this leads, we just have to deal with it.
So far, every time I think we’ve finally reached a high-water mark for crazy, the world proves me wrong. Today, the U.S. tariff on all Chinese imported goods is 145%. But the Chinese tariff on selected U.S. goods is only about 85%. (Maybe they need another day to catch up.)
Against recent history of single-digit average tariff levels for most of the developed world. Economist Paul Krugman characterizes this as the largest international trade shock ever.
Gold is nearing $3200 an ounce, about $350 shy of its all-time peak, in real (CPI-adjusted) terms. That’s never a good sign.
This is not going to end well.
At some point, in the not-too-distant future, I think the U.S.A. is going to be scrambling for the off button. Only to realize there isn’t one.
