A lot of the world of politics is watching on in complete disbelief at the orchestrated farce going on in the US Congress at the moment. Everyone who knows even a little bit about how the system works, knows that the game was rigged before it started; including all the players inside the game. The process going on is in principle asking the question of whether or not an individual should be removed from the office of the President but if it was already all decided before it was ever started, then that question is moot.
The one question which nobody has asked (largely because there is no political will to ask it), isn't the rightness or wrongness of the individuals and parties concerned but whether or not the system itself is fit for purpose.
Probably the only time that I can think of where anyone of note asked the question, was Thomas Jefferson who noted that constitutions expire and that after about nineteen years, you no longer have a living thing but the cold hand of the dead, ruling by force. I personally think that a constitutional review is long overdue; including the questions of who has what power and how they are entrusted to exercise that power.
The unsaid thing about giving power to people, is that you also give them the means to damage the system which put them there. Since people are selfish, then it follows that some of them will damage and bend the system to perpetuate private advantage (which happens to be right at the heart of this impeachment trial).
Imagine that you have a cow. That cow is a particularly evil cow. Now obviously a cow has the potential to cause a lot of damage if it is in the wrong place but a particularly evil cow not only has the ability to cause damage but the intent to cause a lot of damage (It is after all, a particularly evil cow). A particularly evil cow with both the ability and the intent to cause damage should have restraint placed upon it so that even though it has both the ability and intent to cause damage, it does not cause said damage.
Exactly the same thing can be said of people. I for instance probably do have the means to cause damage but rarely do I have the intent. I also do not have the means to cause much damage. A more powerful person than I, pick any metric that you like (physical prowess, financial capital, political power, intelligence), has the ability to cause far more damage than I do. In a lot of cases, we put the restraints of the law upon powerful people so that even though they might have the means and maybe the intent to cause damage if they are particularly evil, the outcome which is hoped for by operation of the law is that they do not cause damage.
We learn from physics that power is the ability to do work. Work is the
exertion of effort over time. What we do not want are particularly evil cows or people doing their work, with particularly evil intents.
For this reason, I simply do not understand why anyone thinks that a Presidential system of government is even part way sensible. There are cases like Australia where you do have a President (in Australia's case the President of the Senate) but there you have a President in a presiding role; as the mediator of discussion and not actually in charge of the executive. A Presidential system of government vests the power of the executive in the hands of a single person.
Remember, power (in this case executive power) is the ability to do work. The question as it relates to executive government is identical to the question of what kind of work that a cow wants to do. If you have an ordinary cow, then they still have the ability to cause damage but not necessarily the intent. If you have a particularly evil cow, then you had better watch out for the worst. Likewise, vesting executive power of a nation in the hands of a single person may in fact be a good idea if the person whose hands it is in, is someone who is benevolent. If they are particularly evil or belligerent, then you had also better watch out for the worst.
As applied to the President of the United States, who has both the means and the ability to cause a lot of damage, the question about whether or not a President has caused damage to the office or the nation, is only ever asked as a matter of fact, after the event. It is never asked about the system itself, which happens to place immense power into the hands of a single person. As we shall see in this impeachment trial, the myth about having checks and balances in place to ensure that damage isn't done, is not a very good myth. All the checks and balances mean nothing if there was no restraint placed upon exercising power; nor do they mean anything if after the event, nothing is to be done about it.
In listening to Ted Cruz's podcast "The Verdict" (which by the way is both excellent and articulate; even if I happen to disagree with just about everything in it), even he concedes that none of the facts of this case are in dispute. Say what you like about whether or not this is impeachable, the fact remains that if this was in a normal court (which it isn't) then a guilty verdict would be returned. What we have then is a Congress with the means to place restraint upon someone doing damage but who refuse to do so. That restraint may as well not exist.
The central problem as it relates to the fitness of the system for purpose though, isn't whether or not this particular person is guilty but whether or not a person can actually be found guilty or not. I suspect (because it has never been tested) that it is impossible to find a President guilty of a crime under the law. If you have an ordinary President, who might have the means to cause damage, then self restraint might stop them from actually doing so. If you have a particularly evil President, who has both the ability and the intent to cause damage, then what exactly is there to stop them?
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