PRESIDENT Donald Trump as become only the third United States president to be impeached. He stands accused of abusing his power and of obstructing Congress. It is alleged he used Washington's military aid to Ukraine as a lever with president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to extract information on the Ukrainian business dealings of the family of Joe Biden. This has caused outrage, particularly among the Democrats. It appears that, from their understanding and experience of US international relations, no president has ever made any sort of diplomatic or financial support dependent on the cooperation of a foreign government. On the other hand every politician on Capitol Hill ought to be perfectly well aware that this is the way that, around the world, stronger powers have always behaved to other countries that need their support. Therefore this fury at Trump's alleged behavior is sheer hypocrisy. The fact that the president may have been seeking the dirt on a political rival is also of marginal consequence. US politics has long been a bear pit with few holds barred. If Trump is guilty of anything, it is probably his sheer lack of subtlety, finesse and discretion. Then there is the other charge that he has obstructed Congress. As if presidents have not always "played", frustrated and as subtly as possible obstructed legislators. And this of course says nothing about the attempts of Congress to obstruct successive presidents. Such a confrontation is a consequence of the balance of powers between the executive and the legislature with the judiciary as the third pillar of the US political system. But those who framed and then amended the US Constitution almost certainly never had in mind a politician who would eschew so blatantly the rules of the Washington political game. And no one could have foreseen the tidal wave of fake news and fatuous opinions - from all sides - that now washes over the US political process like a toxic slime. Trump is a boorish, anti-Establishment figure who despite his sometime ridiculous behavior was still clever enough to win the White House. He has elevated into an art form the general ability of politicians in most democracies to bluster and equivocate and so side step difficult questions. The Trump solution is to dismiss anything in danger of ruffling his coiffed political persona as "fake news". By abandoning any pretence at rational debate, he has left his political opponents seething and incoherent with frustration and despair. Trump's Democrat-led impeachment is a mighty big constitutional gun to want to fire, especially when it is clear that because Republicans will not provide the necessary votes to convict, the trial of this sitting president is going to be a complete waste of time. It may also prove counterproductive. Trump will assuredly insist that this attack on him is an attack on the US voters who put him into the Oval Office, an assault of the people Hillary Clinton characterized so contemptuously as "deplorables". However what Trump is most unlikely to claim is that the Democrat move against him and his administration is actually the latest demented manifestation of the almost complete rupture of bipartisan politics, not just in Washington but right across the country. Indeed this rabid attempt to destroy a president and by extension, his electoral supporters, is actually an impeachment of the US political process.
