Editorial: Impeachment and the politics of exhaustion

For the third time since the birth of the nation, the U.S. House on Wednesday voted articles of impeachment against the president.

It was historic, but it was hard to feel the sense of history.

Some of us are old enough to remember the impeachment hearings against Richard Nixon in 1974, and the atmosphere, no matter what you thought of Nixon, was steeped in reverence for what it meant to the country.

When Bill Clinton was impeached by the House on Dec. 19, 1998, the Congress was divided among partisan lines as it is now, but still there was an august understanding of the place in history the deliberations had carved out for Henry Hyde, the venerable Bensenville Republican who prosecuted the arguments against him.

But on Wednesday?

It felt like cynical politics.

Don't get us wrong. Despite the histrionics of President Donald Trump and his political acolytes, we do think the matters being raised are serious ones worthy of review.

The president reached out to a foreign leader who was significantly beholden to the U.S. and asked "a favor" - that an investigation into the president's chief rival be announced. Not so much that one be conducted, the evidence shows, but be announced, which would inflict just as much political damage. The evidence suggests that the president didn't raise concerns about corruption in general in Ukraine, only about the company linked to his chief rival's son.

With or without holding up any arms deal, that on its face seems inappropriate and it's certainly worthy of a thoughtful Congressional review.

What irony in our current age, after all, was there in then-Vice President Gerald Ford's observation as the storm clouds gathered around Nixon: "The political lesson of Watergate is this, never again may America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to bypass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election."

When we say it feels like cynical politics, it's not that we're agreeing with the president that the inquiry is specious (or, apparently, for that matter, not worthy of testimony from White House officials who could speak to the merits).

But the feeling of cynical politics is laid in the abject tone of polarization coming out of the hyperbolic mouths of both sides in Washington and spewing forth from our cable news channels hour after hour, day after day, week after week.

We, like most of America, we suspect, are exhausted by it.

When will this polarization end? When will we start talking to each other again?

When, and how, will we patch America back together again?