‘Move On,’ Says Rubio

T he origin of the left-wing activist group MoveOn someday will be lost to memory, though its email list is sure to live on ’til Gabriel blows his horn. The group’s name comes from the Bill Clinton impeachment, when Democrats insisted that we “move on” from the sex-and-perjury scandal so that we might get back to “the People’s business.” This was back in the ancient days, when Democrats believed that public figures’ private sex lives had no place in public affairs rather than a principal place in public affairs.

As the Senate begins trying former president Donald Trump’s impeachment case, Republicans are updating the “move on!” chorus, led by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who proclaims:

There isn’t a single American that’s going to get a vaccine because of this impeachment trial. There isn’t a single American that’s going to find a job because of this impeachment trial. There isn’t a single thing that’s going to happen to make us safer from the threat of China from this impeachment trial. And these are the things I wish we were focused on — focused on getting more vaccines to people, focused on getting the economy growing again and getting people back to work, and focused on confronting the challenges before our country. We should be spending every second we’re up here working on those things, not on a trial to impeach a president who’s no longer in office.

This is familiar stuff. Congress appropriates trillions in spending every year, much of it wasteful and some of it actively harmful, and nobody but nobody in government talks seriously about cutting the main spending areas — Social Security, Medicare, the military, etc. — but both Democrats and Republicans will raise an angsty alarum about an unwanted investigation with expenses running into the mere seven or eight figures. Democrats howled about the cost of the Benghazi probe and Republicans abominated the expense of the Robert Mueller investigation, which ran about $7 million and $26 million, respectively. For context, the federal government current spends about $9 million a minute.

If it is not the expense, then it is the “distraction.” But there is no politically, morally, or intellectually serious case for treating Donald Trump’s impeachment as a distraction — it presents a question of fundamental things in our public life.

Senator Rubio seems to be under the impression that the government of the most powerful nation-state in the history of the human species cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. And, indeed, Washington often gives the impression of being filled with men and women who can neither perambulate nor masticate, that the representative Washingtonian is, to borrow Lyndon Johnson’s earthy expression, “so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.” But that is not really true: Washington is more than capable of doing two things at once, provided it has the desire to do those things and the right incentives. If it really were the case that the federal government’s vaccination efforts would be meaningfully hindered by the Trump trial — and that is not actually true — then that would be an argument for replacing Marco Rubio and every other man and woman of longstanding authority in Washington, not an argument for dropping the Trump trial.

Contrary to the sometimes sloppy (and intentionally so) rhetoric of Senator Rubio et al., the Senate is not deciding whether to impeach Trump. Trump already has been impeached. The Senate is considering whether to convict him on the political indictment handed down by the House. This is not a matter that can responsibly be left hanging. Nor is it the case, as Republicans sometimes find themselves obliged to pretend just now, that “impeachment” is a synonym for “removal from office.” Removal from office is one possible outcome of an impeachment, but that is not what an impeachment is: An impeachment is a public proclamation that a public figure lacks integrity, and that, therefore, he cannot be entrusted with political power. If Trump is barred from ever standing for office in the future, it will be for the same reason we deprive felons of the vote — democratic republics require a measure of political hygiene.

Donald Trump already has been impeached. The question is: What is Senator Rubio prepared to do about it? Senator Rubio’s answer apparently is to be: attempt to change the subject, and move on.

“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.” On this urgent national matter, the gentleman from Florida is, at best, lukewarm. He owes his constituents his judgment in full, not his equivocating.