The EIghteenth Brumaire of Nancy Pelosi

“Hegel remarked somewhere that all facts and personages of great importance in world history occur, as it were, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.”   -

 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

It would be a gross exaggeration to call the deposing of Richard Nixon a tragedy, but the politicians who arranged it were able to create an impression of grave and serious business being conducted by grave and serious people  answering the call of duty  and accepting the hard  burden of their responsibility soberly and even reluctantly. They were surely helped by eager supporters in the traditional media and the aid or acquiesce of some Republicans and the pathetic ineptitude of some others,  but Rodino, Ervin, and some of the rest put on a fairly competently run  and generally convincing show.  All that  gravitas may have been pretentious, tiresome,  and often phony, but it mainly worked. They won, and did not look too bad doing so. I would guess that most people thought then, and most people think now that Nixon was treated fairly  and got what he deserved.

Nancy Pelosi has not been so lucky. She has gotten to direct and star in the farce.  Part of her problem was in her cast of characters. Many big city politicians are vulgar, unscrupulous,  party hacks, but Nadler comes across as a nearly epitomical vulgar, unscrupulous,  party hack.  Most politicians are liars, and many are repulsive scoundrels, but Schiff is such a continual and unconvincing liar and so obviously a scoundrel that, as the old joke goes, other politicians have noticed. As a group  Democrats showed  a nearly complete inability to pretend effectively that  they were doing anything soberly or reluctantly or as a matter of duty even as Pelosi knew they needed to do so.  (Her  order for Democrats to show up for the vote in funereal garb was a delightfully ridiculous touch.)    She had most of the people in the traditional media working for her just as the Democrats did in 1974, but that mattered far less than in those days. Public opinion did not move in the Democrats’ direction.  The Republicans in the house  were unanimous in opposing the impeachment, and much of their criticism of it was reasonable, to the point, and convincing. Then there was the problem of the absence of a crime, let alone a high one. It seems clear that the Republicans (and perhaps a few Democrats) in the senate will vote to acquit Trump, perhaps by an outright dismissal of the charges.

There is however one sad if not all  the way tragic aspect of Pelosi’s farce.  Precedent, tradition, and unwritten rules have their uses in political life. The Democrats have set a precedent for the house impeaching a president for no better reason than that a majority of its members dislike him. That is not good for the republic.