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In light of the revelations about Donald Trump ostensibly revealing classified intelligence to Russian officials, and asking James Comey to back off the Michael Flynn investigation, some conservatives (not to mention liberals) are raising the possibility of having Trump removed from office. The New York Times’s Ross Douthat has provocatively floated what he calls the “25th amendment option,” instead of impeachment.

A president, Douthat argues, must possess “a reasonable level of intellectual curiosity, a certain seriousness of purpose, a basic level of managerial competence, a decent attention span, a functional moral compass, a measure of restraint and self-control. And if a president is deficient in one or more of them, you can be sure it will be exposed. Trump is seemingly deficient in them all.”

David Brooks similarly argues that Trump is fundamentally childish. Douthat notes, “A child cannot be president. I love my children; they cannot have the nuclear codes.” For Douthat, these deep deficiencies rise to the level of a need for removal. He advocates employing the 25th amendment, which offers a scenario where a president can be deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Others have called such talk dangerous and elitist.

What should Christian readers think about the possibility of removing Trump from office? Obviously, we should work and pray for a government that functions as well as possible, while also being realistic about the limitations of any human institution. Whatever we think about President Trump, we should certainly be praying for him and his administration in these troubled times.

Anyone who has followed my writing knows that I was in the #NeverTrump camp in the fall, and Trump’s presidency has given me little reason to re-think my opposition to him as the Republican nominee. Aside from some impressive appointments, including what seems to be a solid (if not sure-fire) choice of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, his presidency has unfortunately been marred by all the deficiencies Douthat describes above.

But removal from office requires a high standard indeed. We have never had a president removed from office by either impeachment or the 25th amendment process. Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached (accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors”) by the House but not removed by the Senate. Amid the Watergate scandal, President Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment and removal.

The reason why Douthat (with whom I ordinarily agree) prefers the 25th amendment approach is that it makes (in his interpretation) incompetence and ineptitude a reason for removal, rather than requiring proof of actual crimes. Although Trump has apparently opened the door to accusations of obstruction of justice in discouraging Comey from investigating Michael Flynn (the House Oversight committee has requested documentation on the issue, including Comey’s notes), most of the other Trump follies are not conceivably criminal in a technical sense. The president has final authority over declassifying intelligence, for example, so blabbing to the Russians was probably inappropriate and boneheaded, but not criminal.

But it is a real stretch to see the 25th amendment as a means to remove an incompetent, boorish president. The amendment’s obvious intent (as Douthat concedes) was to give the cabinet and Congress the ability to remove someone who is medically disabled—for example, a president who is suffering from dementia but will not resign. It would be utterly unprecedented for Trump’s cabinet and Republicans in Congress to become so alienated from Trump that they would chose to interpret the 25th amendment as allowing them to remove Trump simply because they think he is incompetent.

The most likely scenario for removal is not the 25th amendment scenario, then, but impeachment and removal.

As far as we currently know, James Comey took notes on at least one conversation he had with President Trump about the Flynn investigation. Even if those notes turn out to be exactly as reported, it is not clear that they would provide evidence of an impeachable offense.

What impeachment and removal would require is clear evidence of criminal offense(s) by Trump, combined with a willingness of a small number of Republicans in the House, and a significant number of Republican senators, to agree to move forward on the basis of those crimes with impeachment and removal. (The 25th amendment scenario requires a majority of the cabinet and two-thirds of each chamber in Congress. The impeachment and removal scenario requires a majority in the House to impeach, and two-thirds of the Senate to remove.)

Critics of Trump expected that we would have constant chaos and improper behavior by him as president, though I don’t know if most realized we would have so much chaos and impropriety this fast. On the other hand, Trump’s shtick as candidate made a LOT of enemies in the press and intelligence community, people perfectly positioned to give him a lot of trouble and to fuel the furor. The results have been predictable, and it’s all bad for the republic.

But we still have a constitutional republic, and under almost all circumstances we allow elected officials to serve out the balance of their terms (and even run for re-election), no matter how incompetent they appear to be to some observers. In Trump’s case, America is now going through a glaring instance of the sowing and reaping principle (Gal. 6:7). It is painful to watch, and will be more painful to endure. But that does not warrant dubious constitutional measures to stop the pain.

The situation today with Trump may have parallels to problems in other types of leadership situations, such as when members or a church board are frustrated with their pastor. Sometimes when a leader disappoints and the road gets rough, the temptation is to resolve those problems quickly, even through questionable tactics of dismissal. (Obviously, there are certain pastoral offenses that do warrant immediate termination.) But wisdom and grace would suggest that our default mode should be giving a leader a chance, whether we supported the initial choice of them or not.

Rash moves are not guaranteed to make things better in any sphere of life, even when a situation seems almost insufferable. What we think might relieve us of a difficult situation or a problematic leader can, in the long run, compound the very problems we are trying to solve.

See also Charles Cooke, “On Ross Douthat and the 25th Amendment,” National Review

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