Bless its pointed little head--Ezra Klein wants to know: What if 'we elect' the 'wrong' president?

(from "Vox" ( "The case for normalizing impeachment" by Ezra Klein )

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"In recent months, I have grown obsessed with a seemingly simple question: Does the American political system have a remedy if we elect the wrong person to be president? There are clear answers if we elect a criminal, or if the president falls into a coma. But what if we just make a hiring mistake, as companies do all the time? What if we elect someone who proves himself or herself unfit for office — impulsive, conspiratorial, undisciplined, destructive, cruel?"

Of course, he's not _really_ asking our opinion on this 'question.' Rather, he wants to instruct us--especially those of us who got it wrong by failing to vote for Hillary Clinton.

His 'remedy'--as he's already decided it--is to annul the election result (and the (presumed democratic-process faith and trust on which it was premised?) through removalby making impeachment, trial, conviction (there's the rub), and removal the 'normal' couse to fix electoral mistakes.

Are you with him on that?

"A number of House Democrats have introduced bills that point toward Trump’s removal. Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, introduced articles of impeachment built around Trump’s possible violations of the law. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, also a California Democrat, introduced a resolution calling for Trump to receive medical evaluation to uncover whether he is capable of carrying out the duties of his office — if not, the Cabinet could invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him.

"But what if Trump isn’t a criminal or mentally incompetent? What if he’s exactly the man we saw in the election and that man just shouldn’t be president? What if America simply made a mistake?

In that case, even these Democrats are fatalistic.

“ 'I think they're stuck with the mistake,' says Lofgren.

“ 'We're more or less a democracy,' says Sherman. 'There are 320 million people out there. When they hear the term 'high crimes and misdemeanors,' their reaction is, 'Show me the crime.'

Sometimes I imagine this era going catastrophically wrong — a nuclear exchange with North Korea, perhaps, or a genuine crisis in American democracy — and historians writing about it in the future. They will go back and read Trump’s tweets and his words and read what we were saying, and they will wonder what the hell was wrong with us. You knew, they’ll say. You knew everything you needed to know to stop this. And what will we say in response?"

Our answer should be that taking such a course on the supposed certainty that, without it, 'we're all surely doomed" is precisely the logic through which George W. Bush launched a war --premised on eliminating 'Weapons of Mass-Destruction' which weren't there, hadn't been found, though they'd been mightily sought, and evidence for which existence he never came up with despite being challenged to do so.

Our answer should be, "We stuck with the electoral result despite its disappointing factors and features because, had we done anything else, you'd be left with even less in a so-called self-government of democratic principles than what we had to work with. And to prevent that, we assume risks for ourselves and those who come after us. That's why. If you can't understand that, you've failed your 'democratic citizenship test.' "

It requires a stunning sort of imbicility to fail to recognize that the system's provision for an 'electoral error,' choosing the 'wrong' candidate, is 'the next election for the office concerned.' Second-thoughts are proper to the next election--after the results of the most recent HAVE BEEN RESPECTED ACCORDING TO LAW"

The U.S. system is not a parliamentary one. Nor are votes to elect public officials anything of the kind which a jury practices in reaching a verdict. In the case of a jury, facts are argued at trial--a case is made 'pro' and 'con' and the jury is asked to pronounce upon which case best represents what 'justice' does mean or ought to mean according to their view of the cases presented and argued at trial--which is why it's called "trying a case.". In a criminal case, there are indeed actual objective facts: the accused really is (factually speaking) either legally guilty or innocent of the charges against him--and that remains true whether the jury gets its verdict in accord with that fact or not.

This is nothing like a vote to elect a person to public office: there is no "objective" fact of one candidate being "the right one correct one (or even 'most correct one') " and all others "the wrong one"--"please indicate by your ballot which is which." No!

Instead, voters are charged with responding to one and only one question: In your judgement, formed upon whatever reasons or grounds you see fit to make it, which of the eligible candidates do you prefer to see elected?" There's no "right" or "wrong" as such in that matter As long as the voter casts his or her ballot for the candidate he or she intends to prefer, he or she has "voted correctly"-- 'error' being only in mistaking which box to mark on the ballot-paper, which lever to pull, in the voting-machine, etc.

But this damnable concept is precisely what the political idiot Ezra Klein is now urging us to see as right and true. Again, if you cannot grasp that, your political understanding is woefully inadequate. But under this system, you still get a fucking vote--provided you meet the legal requirements which apply to all electors. And that, too, IS AS IT OUGHT TO BE.

It's not potential folly to act on such a course and through such faulty reasoning--unless we do (it seems to some of us who are really really nervous and worried) that we're all doomed"--it's genuine, actual, real-time folly.

Klein of course isn't saving democracy. He's having one of those "In order to save democracy, we have to destroy it" moments. In the U.S. war in Viet Nam, that logic led to U.S. soldiers literally burning down hamlets of thatched huts, removing all their inhabitants, "in order to save the hamlet."

Making huge electoral 'mistakes' simply has to be 'in the cards,' one of the possible outcomes of free and fair elections--otherwise, you must admit that, under the system one advocates, such 'mistakes' aren't allowed--and that resembles Russia under Stalin or Korea today under its leader. In that case, there's no point in the election in the first place.

Klein's reasoning is properly frightening precisely because it is so amazingly complete in its failure to grasp the most vital essentials of political and electoral liberty--that coupled with the fact that he is not supposed to be poltically an utter moron or morally brain-dead.

And it is this which really ought to frighten you about not the potential future--which may never happen--but the actual present which is here and now with us.

While of course I don't know the ins and outs of your peculiar US system of governance (I use "peculiar" not in a pejorative sense, but in deference to Barney who keeps telling me how unique the USA is), it is not unprecedented for there to be mechanisms to change the elected leader reflecting a change of attitude within a country. In the UK a sitting government has to go for a fresh election if they lose a vote of no confidence in parliament, which would normally involve Members of Parliament from the ruling party siding with the opposition to defeat the prime minister and her supporters. It does not subvert the will of the people, as the people are offered a fresh vote in which they can, if they still wish, vote the sitting party/leader back into power again.

In principle, therefore, is it so unthinkable that a majority of elected legislators, including many from the president's own party, could take the matter back to the people to affirm or change their original choice? In practice, of course, few people would wish to see a repeat of the circus which is a US presidential election.

Michelle Goldberg doesn't agree-- on the impeachment course of action.

Never mind about the messy process of impeachment. She prefers the 25th-Amendment-route. Did you think that the Very Important People in the MSM were finished with the "The President is mentally-unfit to serve" meme? Think again: "Trump Is Cracking Up" Opinion | Op-Ed Columnist | New York Times DEC. 1, 2017, by Michelle Goldberg

This is the professional opinion of Michelle Goldberg in her capacity as a medical doctor, specializing in the diagnosis of psychiat--excuse me, her professional opinion as an editorial opinion columnist.

This is the same national press corps which ridiculed Trump as a looney because he thought the MSM had drawn a big "bulls-eye" on his presidency. Hmm. We're not out to get you, sir. We're just doing our job--which is to inform the general public that you're 'nucking futts'. "

Now, for Goldberg's heart's desire to pan out, all that's required is set out in Section IV of the amendment's text:

Section 4.

"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

"Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office."

As indicated in the emphasis-added citation, above, the procedure is clear and quite simple. Once the mad-as-a hatter president transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his declaration that "no disability exists," the way is open for the president's removal by a 2/3rds vote--provided that "the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."

Simple: The Congress--by a two-thirds majority vote of both houses--merely needs to join in the opinion that the president is unfit to serve. In this case, Vice President Pence takes up or continues to exercise the duties of the office of president.

"If you think 2017 was bad, imagine an America without allies fighting another two-front war, this one involving nuclear weapons, under the leadership of the most hated president in modern history, while a torture apologist runs the C.I.A. The world right now is a powder keg. Trump, an untethered maniac, sits atop it, flicking a lighter that Republicans in Congress could take away, but won’t. If everything goes up in flames, we can’t say we weren’t warned."

And if everything doesn't ("go up in flames") ? --that's a reference to nuclear-war, by the way, for, if we were to take the terms "go up in flames" as a literal description of what is feared, then my question is: "As opposed to what?" ) ---

What, then, can we say? What, then, would the MSM pundits like Goldberg say? "Though, yes, 'we were warned,' I was wrong"?

Someone on Trump's staff should, and could, however, re-run a videotape for the president in which he puts to rest the "Birther" matter:

"President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period."