History can be a harsh judge.
When the tumult surrounding controversial events quiets, people — not just scholars, but actual people — look at what happened. They peer through the confusion and, with a clearer gaze, determine what was right and what was wrong.
And, of course, who was right and who was wrong.
We’re about to experience such a stocktaking.
This midterm election more and more looks like a turning point. The more noise and distractions President Donald Trump and his allies generate, the less people tend to believe him and the lower his poll numbers drop.
Trump now is polling even worse than he did when the off-year elections approached during his first term. In that year, 2018, his Republican Party lost the U.S. House of Representatives, a development that led to the first serious attempts to hold this president accountable for his many transgressions.
Trump was impeached not once, but twice.
He survived both impeachments but became the first president in U.S. history to have members of his own party vote to have him removed from office.
The polls now strongly suggest that Republicans once again will lose the House to Democrats. The same polls also indicate that the GOP may lose the U.S. Senate — as well as a host of lesser races in states, including states once considered solidly Republican, across the country.
Once they are back in power, Democrats likely won’t rely on impeachment as a remedy to right wrongs. The smart Democrats are wise enough to know that, however egregious Trump’s offenses might be, they’re not likely to secure the 67 votes necessary to remove him from office in the Senate.
Nor, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court decision granting presidents broad immunity for any action, however otherwise illegal, that can be considered in any way a part of their “official” duties, are they likely to be able to hold Trump accountable for any of his transgressions through prosecution.
But that blanket of immunity does not extend to others.
It doesn’t cover the Cabinet members and senior staffers who either encouraged him to break the law or sat quietly on their hands while he did so. Nor does it cover the family members — such as his sons — who have leveraged their access to the Oval Office to make billions of dollars and shamelessly accepted bribes disguised as gifts from foreign oligarchs.
All of those folks should be lawyering up now, because the best guess is that congressional investigators will take both their time and precautions to make sure that any evidence they secure can be used in future prosecutions — prosecutions that may take place after Trump has left office and no longer can issue pardons.
Such a strategy will put those close to the president in a difficult position.
When they faced legal trouble following his first term, their strategy often was to delay, delay, delay. Running out the clock gave them a chance to have the charges dropped or dismissed should Trump be re-elected.
No such hope, regardless of the president’s fanciful fulminations about a third term, exists this time.
Slow-walking and shilly-shallying on this go-around only will increase the chances that the real hammer will fall when Trump no longer is in a position to protect them.
But the members of the president’s inner circle aren’t the only ones likely to face unrelenting scrutiny.
No, the members of the Republican Party across the country who lowered their eyes and buried their consciences while Trump trashed this nation’s history, flouted the U.S. Constitution and trapped us in an unwise and illegal war will face harsh judgment, too.
Those Republicans will try to defend themselves by casting those judgments as partisan and ideological in nature.
But the defense won’t work — in large part because their abdication of any oversight responsibilities represented and represents a betrayal of fundamental conservative beliefs.
The party that once stood for constitutional checks and balances and opposed excessive government power watched and often cheered while this president exercised and abused executive authority in ways never before seen in this country.
Former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, was as staunchly conservative as they come. She tried to warn her fellow Republicans about what awaited them.
“There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain,” Cheney said.
They should have listened to her.