Quid pro what?

As Democrats pursue their "impeachment inquiry" into President Donald Trump's efforts to induce Ukraine to investigate the alleged corruption of Joe and Hunter Biden, on every American's lips these days is a Latin phrase: quid pro quo.

Does the fate of the Trump presidency really rest on a Latin saying that few citizens have ever heard, and which only a small percentage understand? Possibly, but, as I will explain, there's no reason why it should.

In simple terms, quid pro quo means "you scratch my back, and I scratch yours." It refers, therefore, to a transaction from which both parties expect to derive benefit. The flip side of a quid pro quo is an assurance, spoken or unspoken, that, if you refuse to scratch my back, I certainly won't be scratching yours.

Given the seemingly innocuous nature of quid pro quos, we might reasonably ask: Why are the Democrats concentrating on proving a quid pro quo in President Trump's outreach to Ukraine? Why do so many deep state denizens, including the whistleblower, view it as scandalous that a quid pro quo may have been at issue? Why, moreover, have even some congressional Republicans hinted that if a quid pro quo could be proved, then President Trump would be in serious trouble?

Everyone seems to be assuming that the real issue at stake in these impeachment proceedings is a quid pro quo. Since impeachment is an inherently political and therefore subjective process, in a sense they may be right: a quid pro quo is, or can be, impeachable, if congressmen believe it to be so. The truth, however, is that the presence or absence of a quid pro quo in the Trump administration's relationship with Ukraine is utterly irrelevant to the legality or even the propriety of President Trump's behavior. No one, in fact, should care whether there was a quid pro quo at all.

Why do I say that? It's simple: Quid pro quos are the very substance of foreign policy. Countries are constantly negotiating with one another, and in the process of negotiating they routinely offer to do favors for one another on a transactional basis. They offer quid pro quos.

Let us not forget that in many ways the current Ukraine crisis has its origins in former Vice President Joe Biden's boast on tape that he demanded that Ukraine fire its chief prosecutor, or else it would not receive a $1 billion loan from the United States. That's what we call, if we're inclined to Latinized pomposity, a "quid pro quo." Biden didn't conceal the terms of the deal he was offering to Ukraine, because he was proud of his accomplishment. Ukraine wanted its money, and we wanted a prosecutor fired. Thanks to the magic of the quid pro quo, we both got what we wanted. Marvelous!

Why, then, are Democrats, the media and all too many Beltway Republicans prepared to assume that if President Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine, he is therefore in violation of his oath of office and liable to impeachment? The answer is simple, but deeply disturbing to any Trump supporter: All these groups fault President Trump for a quid pro quo not because they are opposed to quid pro quos in themselves, but because they assume, almost entirely without evidence, that Trump's core motivation in advocating for a Ukrainian investigation into the Bidens was corrupt.

They assume in the process that the Bidens are innocent of any wrongdoing. They assume that Trump knows that the Bidens are innocent. They assume, moreover, that Trump's only possible reason for pursuing a "bogus" investigation of the Bidens is to slander them and thus to gain advantage in the 2020 presidential election.

These are, in case you haven't noticed, some mighty big assumptions!

As far as I am aware, Democrats like Adam Schiff haven't wasted a single minute trying to validate any of these assumptions, nor has the media upbraided them for their omission. That's because the ill will and corrupt motives of Donald J. Trump are taken for granted in almost all quarters in Washington, D.C.

But you and I know better. We know that, if the really substantive charge in this impeachment inquiry is that President Trump conducted a foreign policy motivated not by the national interest but by his personal, private interests, then we have a right to expect that this all-important contention will be not simply assumed but amply proven with evidence. Thus far, it hasn't been. Not even close.

It bears repeating that the same Democrats who are scandalized by Trump's attempt to involve Ukraine in an investigation of the Bidens are not troubled in the least by the intelligence community, the Justice Department and the Obama administration seeking the help of a wide network of foreigners — Australians, Brits, Italians, Russians and Ukrainians, among others — in spying on and digging up dirt regarding Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign.

Just as the Democrats, the media and many establishment Republicans assume Trump's corruption in 2019, they assumed, and continue to assume, the Obama administration's and the deep state's patriotism, professionalism and even-handedness in 2016.

Moreover, anyone who looks critically at those efforts to undermine Trump and his campaign — anyone such as Attorney General Bill Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham — is assumed to be engaged in a witch hunt, or to be peddling "conspiracy theories." But how would we ever know that the "conspiracy" against Trump was merely theoretical, and not real, unless we investigated the matter fully?

In the end, Democrats in Congress are chasing their tails, and in more ways than one. They have set themselves the task of proving that Donald Trump engaged in a quid pro quo with Ukraine, presumably because proving a quid pro quo, which is commonplace in politics and in life, is easier than proving corruption or "treasonous" intent. It certainly looks, though, as if the Democrats will fall short even of their self-appointed and minimal task of proving a quid pro quo. The evidence is murky at best that any such transaction ever occurred, or was suggested in an intelligible way to both sides. For this reason, the quid pro quo is a dud, and the impeachment inquiry will fail.

What's more, though, the Democrats, by starting their inquiry with an unspoken but deeply inappropriate assumption — that the president of the United States is corrupt and unpatriotic — have invalidated and tainted all their subsequent efforts.

Adam Schiff and his ilk, by starting with the assumed guilt of President Trump and working backwards to try to find the "evidence," no matter how flimsy, to substantiate it, have turned American justice on its head. They have made a mockery of the very Constitution which they profess to revere. They have, in short, sunk the S.S. Impeachment before its keel was ever laid. The sooner they realize this, the better.

I have, therefore, a quid pro quo to offer the impeachment-happy Democrats in Congress. Resign now, and we, the American people, will assume (in a fit of generosity) that you regret your betrayal of our constitutional system and your repeated calumnies against our duly elected president. We will therefore forego exacting justice on you, which will, should you foolishly reject this offer of clemency, come swiftly and surely in the form of your ignominious defeat in 2020.

There it is. Take it or leave it.

You can't say we didn't warn you.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an associate professor of history at SUNY Alfred and blogs at waddyisright.com. He appears weekly on the "Newsmaker Show" on WLEA 1480.