The plot that never materializes: The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, by Stephen Carter

 While question of how Donald Trump handled official documents, including classified documents, amid his post-presidency has taken up much of the political oxygen this week, what has continued to roil the January 6 investigation in a more serious way is the ongoing series of revelations about the extent to which those within Trump's orbit pushed to have voting machines seized as part of some (1/x)baked plot to cling to power beyond the inauguration date, and overturn the 2020 election.  These plots did not come to fruition.  No voting machines were seized, no national emergency was declared, and these bonkers schemes, while many of us were warning about them in advance of 2020, and continue to warn about them for 2024, did not actually happen.  And so, this morning, we turn to the question of plots to seize power.  The plots that don't actually happen, and for that, we turn to a novel that I have assigned to my students in the past-- The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln, by Stephen L. Carter.  The novel is an alternate history in which Lincoln survives Booth's bullet, only to be impeached by the "Radical Republicans" a few years later.  So instead of Andrew Johnson being impeached, Lincoln gets impeached, and Stanton is involved in a very different way.  And I know where you think I'm going with this.  Since Lincoln died, the plot in the book didn't happen, so the plot that didn't happen is the plot for which Lincoln was impeached, and... good guess!  But... wrong.

Spoilers abound, obviously, but here's the basic set-up.  As stated, Lincoln survives, but a rift grows between Lincoln and the Radical Republican faction that controls Congress before the Southern states are fully readmitted during Reconstruction.  Some of them are your hardcores, your purists.  Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner.  Then, though, you have an assortment of shall we say, flexible opportunists.  There's a lot going on behind the scenes, having to do with tariffs, which industries would benefit from them, who would be hurt by them, and a lot of the impeachment maneuverings are sort of a smokescreen for economic policymaking, and one industry trying to get a leg up on another, which is pretty cool.  But the surface level story is that the Radical Republicans pass four articles of impeachment through the House, leading to a trial in the Senate, with Lincoln hiring a law firm to defend him, and the story is told mostly from the perspective of the law firm.  You have an African-American woman who is trying to become a lawyer, starting off working for the firm in a very low level capacity, and there are some really icky terms that I don't feel like typing used to refer to her.  Abigail Canner is kind of your main character, but she's honestly boring.  She is said to be intelligent and interesting and yadda-yadda, but it's more of a tell-rather-than-show thing.  The interesting characters are the historical characters, because Carter has historical documentation, and he can put some flesh on those bones.  So, Dan Sickles for example.  Real guy, great character.  Abigail?  Dull, dull, dullski.

Anywho, the characters ain't the point.  The point is playing around with alternate history, and where's Stanton if he isn't getting Johnson impeached, and so forth.  Answer:  deep in Lincoln's impeachment.

So the Radical Republicans are pissed at Lincoln for being some combination of "tyrant" and "spineless," which... OK.  He's tyrannical for running roughshod over Congress, and spineless for not standing up to the South, but kind of an interesting mix, right?  I suppose the GOP accused Obama of being both "tyrant" and "spineless," so the lack of logical coherence actually does have some empirical validity when it comes to those, a century and a half later, under the same party banner, acting like radicals.

Anywho, off track again.  I'm a political science professor.  As a general rule, we dig Lincoln.  (Fuck you, San Francisco Board of Education.  May I introduce you to Samuel L. Jackson?)  But the Radical Republicans?  Not so much.  They pass four articles of impeachment in the House.  They charge him with 1) the suspension of Habeas Corpus, 2) seizing telegrams sent during the war, 3) insufficient action to protect freed slaves after the Civil War, and 4) the plot to create the "Department of the Atlantic."

(1) should sound familiar.  Read about it elsewhere.  (2) may be less familiar, but (2a) read about it elsewhere, and (2b) you know that government snooping is kind of a big issue in the post-9/11 era, right?  Movin' on.

(3) is a charge that only makes any sense in the alternate timeline in which Lincoln survives the bullet.  It is a little soft and squishy, though, isn't it?  This is not my main point for today, but the basic charge is that the President is not going all-out to do Congress's bidding.  He's half-assin' it.  And sure, it may be morally wrong, presuming it's true, but is it a crime?  No.  This brings up the question of "high crimes and misdemeanors."  Can the president be impeached for something which is not a crime?  Sound familiar?  Carter even writes a shitload, from Lincoln's idealistic defense, aghast at the idea of impeaching a president for something which is not a crime!  This was before Trump, I'll note.  Yet this is not my main point.  Maybe I'll come back to it.  Today, or another day.  Or not.  Dunno.

My main point is (4).  The Department of the Atlantic.  You've heard of it, of course.  Right?  Right?  If I were doing this in a classroom, I could get a few people to pretend to have heard of it, but there ain't no such thing.  This is Carter's invention.  Here's the deal.  In the novel, Lincoln is getting annoyed by the fact that he proposes legislation, and Congress shoots it down like Dick Cheney playing duck hunt on a friend's face.  (Liz knows where to direct her fire.)  This is a thing that happens.  Both with presidents generally, and with Dick.  But in the novel, Abe's gettin' sick of this shit.  So a plot is conceived to create this thing called the "Department of the Atlantic," which would be under the executive, and have full jurisdiction over every fucking thing in Washington, D.C.  You know what is physically located in D.C.?  Congress.  It's an insane plot for a presidential takeover of Congress, along with, effectively, declaring martial law in D.C. to make it work.  You won't pass my laws?  You're in my town, now.  Batshit crazy, right?

Yeah, so the thing is, at no point in even the alternate timeline of the novel does the Department move past the wacky idea phase.  Yet, it's the lynchpin of the impeachment.  Lincoln is impeached for a thing he never did.  He is impeached for thinking about doing a thing that he didn't do.  Because the thing was so crazy that he should have said, holy shit, this is fucking crazy.  But, you know, cooler, 'cuz he was Abe, and I suck at words.

And so we turn to the seizing of voting machines.  A thing that never happened.  At first, it was revealed as an idea that didn't really move past the idea stage.  Yet as we are learning, it moved further along than merely Rudy and Michael Flynn and a few other post-fall-Humpty-Dumpty-pots taking hits of whatever wacko hallucinogen makes conservatives see nonexistent voter fraud around every corner and then think that their dumbass thoughts are brilliant.

Rudy actually made phone calls to try to acquire those machines.  As an example.

At first, it looked like the seizing-machines plot was basically the "Department of the Atlantic."  Or maybe just a scheme cooked up by druggos after sucking Trump's cock for the cash they needed for their next fix.  And now I'm thinking, remember the idiot in Breaking Bad who actually managed to steal an ATM?  (Not actually Flynn.)

There's a point at which you have to look at Rudy, and Michael Flynn and the rest, and ask: are they actually on drugs?  Don't make me be Mr. Hand.

There.  You made me say it.  Are you happy now?

The question, then, is at what point the Department of the Atlantic moves from wackadoodle lark, floating around a frustrated White House occupied by a political dead-man-walking, and becomes attempt.  At what point does the shoot-down negate the effort?

Within the novel, I think it's actually hard to accuse Lincoln of seriously trying to create the Department of the Atlantic.  It was an idea that didn't go anywhere.  Rather, the whiff of scandal, combined with more complex politics take him down.  Quite plausibly, as written by Carter.  Good book, by the way.

And when I first heard about the idea of seizing voting machines, even as much as I detest Trump, my initial reaction was that to hold it against him would be no different than that fourth article of impeachment against Lincoln in the alternate history.  If it is an idea that doesn't come to fruition... no.

Yet there is a point at which the attempt makes it more than an idea.  We saw that with the Ukraine phone call that got Trump impeached the first time.  He failed to secure the deal he wanted from Zelensky, but the attempt was a corrupt attempt.  The failure does not negate the corruption of the attempt.

Sideshow Bob tried to beat an attempted murder charge by asking, do we give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry?!  Great line, of course, but actually, I'm cool with calling attempted murder a crime, and when you make the attempt, you're crossing the line.

Rudy tried to seize the voting machines.  He didn't try that hard.  The DoJ told Trump to go fuck himself, but Trump tried to get the DoJ to seize the voting machines.  This went further than the Department of the Atlantic.  At first, it was not clear how far the efforts went, and if they had gone no further than Rudy and Flynn talking big about how they're smarter than Spooge from Breaking Bad, which is obviously the standard to which we should hold our officials, then we'd be in Carter-ville.  Give them the consolation prize: DVD boxed sets of Breaking Bad, Trump can get himself worked up by repeating "say my name" because he's too stupid to understand that Walt was the villain, who at least had the dignity to shave his bald-ass head, and the rest of us can just keep feeling like Gia from Veronica Mars, choking to death on our own vomit because the Trump show refuses to be canceled.

They should have called Saul.

Music.  I can make a strong case that this is the best bluegrass album ever.  Or at least, the best pairing.  Norman Blake & Tony Rice, "Lincoln's Funeral Train," from Norman Blake & Tony Rice 2.  Their first outing together was great, and their second managed to top even that.  A few tracks on this album even have Doc Watson.  (Sorry, not this one, but it's the track I had to post.)  This album has Norman Blake, Tony Rice, and Doc Watson playing together.  All other guitar albums bow down before it.