Affixed to the tailgate of a Nissan Rogue SUV driving around Manchester, Conn., is a bumper sticker reading, "Health care, not warfare." Amen to that. But the bumper sticker was issued by the Progressive Democrats of America even as most "progressive" -- that is, liberal -- Democrats in Congress seem perfectly happy with U.S. involvement in civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Indeed, the more President Trump grouses about "ridiculous endless wars," the more "progressive" Democrats in Congress support them. This is Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Connecticut's junior U.S. senator, Chris Murphy, may be suffering the country's worst case of TDS. Murphy bemoans the president's withdrawal of a thousand soldiers from Syria as if a mere thousand soldiers ever could have accomplished much in the civil war there and as if the United States has a vital interest in the war.
Of course if the United States did have a vital interest in the war, it would have to dispatch at least a half million soldiers and hundreds of warplanes to have a chance of defeating all the contestants: the Syrian regime, the Syrian insurgents, the Kurdish insurgents, and Turkey, Iran and Russia, among others. Then those U.S. soldiers would have to occupy Syria indefinitely during "nation building," as if many years of U.S. "nation building" accomplished much in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
Maybe advocating such a full deployment to Syria and nation building there will be the next stage of Senator Murphy's disease. Or maybe he could be cured of it if news organizations and his constituents pressed him to explain what he considers the vital interest in Syria apart from the Democratic Party's interest in generating political hysteria by opposing whatever our erratic president says or does.
Trump is impeachable and even seems to be trying to provoke impeachment, but none of the reasons being contrived by the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives resembles "high crimes and misdemeanors," least of all the president's using U.S. military aid as leverage to induce Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden's influence-peddling son, Hunter.
The Democrats shriek that Trump, a Republican, used the government to advance his re-election campaign and hinder the campaign of a Democratic challenger. Yet in 2016 Trump's predecessor, Democrat Barack Obama, used the government to undermine Trump's campaign and assist the campaign of his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, by minimizing her misconduct as secretary of state.
Most politics everywhere is a matter of using government to improve the prospects of the incumbents. Sometimes it descends to criminality, as when President Richard Nixon concealed his 1972 re-election campaign's burglary of the Democratic National Committee in what became the Watergate scandal. But most of this stuff is not illegal at all, as when, during the 1940 presidential campaign, President Franklin Roosevelt used the government to spread rumors about the extramarital affair of his Republican challenger, Wendell Willkie. There is a recording of one of Roosevelt's own phone calls.
As a matter of law "high crimes and misdemeanors" are in the eye of the beholder. But the compelling case for Trump's removal from office has nothing to do with them and everything to do with his character -- his frightening intemperance, instability, dishonesty, recklessness, and ignorance, his unfitness to have authority over anyone.
The hysteria and contrivances of the Democrats just distract from that.
Chris Powell is a columnist for the Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn.
