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Delusional prognostications
To the editor, The purpose of my letter is to contest the notions advanced in your editorial endorsing a Senate trial. You write "the Senate will weigh whether the president's perjury meets the constitutional criterion for impeachment." This is an error. The fact is the Senate does not weigh whether the president's conduct is impeachable, the House of Representatives decides and has decided that question. The president's conduct is impeachable because the House of Representatives has impeached the President. Further you advance the notion that "the Senate is more attuned to the will of the people. . . [ and that] the composition is more representative." This also is not exactly true. Any cursory reading of the Constitution will demonstrate that members of the Senate serve six-year terms and members of the House two-year terms, therefore the House of Representatives, always looking over its shoulder for the next election, is, in your words "more attuned to the will of the people." Secondly, the composition of the Senate is not more representative. If you would only look in the Congressional Quarterly, you will note that white men with legal backgrounds make up a near-ninety percent majority, hardly a complete, much less a mirror image representation of "real Americans." There is one Native American, Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO), a couple of Asians, the Senate delegation from Hawaii, and a handful of women senators from Maine, California, and the junior senator Washington. Further, you err in making a prediction, when every substantial journalist of note for the last year has made predictions that have consistently been WRONG!!! You forget the maxim that twenty months is an eternity in American politics. Predicting tomorrow is difficult at best, but prognosticating twenty months is delusion. But then again advancing opinions based on delusional premises is not outside the conductof the President's defenders. Alas, I do agree that there should be a fair and full Senate trial. And unfortunately, I will concede that the majority of Americans do not agree that this imp of a man should be removed from office. But only a cursory examination of American history will demonstrate that sometimes during crucial points in our history, the American people have been wrong and wrong big time.
James Bretney
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