Rough Days for the U.S. Presidency

On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon officially resigned from the presidency.

This is worth noting because Nixon had significant political support….right up to the time that he didn’t.  What appeared like a survivable albeit tumultuous period in the U.S. presidency at one point rapidly became completely untenable, and Nixon hurriedly engineered a deal that, while it would keep him out of prison, required him to leave in disgrace.

Is there a possibility that the Trump presidency could parallel this rapid descent?  A majority of Democrats (118 of 234) in the U.S. House of Representatives favors moving forward with impeachment, and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler said publicly for the first time yesterday that his panel is conducting an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump: “This is (sic) formal impeachment proceedings.” Jerry: your subject and verb need to agree in number.  “These are….”

But Nadler’s grammar isn’t the only weak point here; this entire operation seems fairly lackluster at present, and I’ll be the first to admit that it appears Trump will survive to run in the 2020 election.

Yet the final chapter hasn’t been written.  Don’t forget: the future always looks like the past, until it looks like something altogether different.