Wondering if there are any other independents on here and if they see this thing the same as I do. I'll preface this with the fact that there are parts of each party (republican, democrat, and libertarian) platforms that I can get behind and other parts that I cannot, but generally I'm probably more right leaning than left. I fully believe that President Trump wanted the Ukrainian Government to announce they were investigating the Biden's actions during the President Obama's term in office to use against Joe Biden in his campaign efforts. I have no doubt that any politician would do the same if they felt it would help their campaign. I do not think asking someone to announce something that hurts your political foe makes you a foreign agent for that country. My gut says this is a two birds with one stone situation and can imagine that if I was President and I could do something that supported my foreign policy agenda and helped my campaign at the same time that would be a win-win. My gut also says that President Trump would have never actually pursued an investigation on Joe Biden based on the fact that he has not initiated any investigations into the Hillary Clinton campaign actions other than his bravado in speeches which excites his political supporters, but does no real damage to her or other democratic leaders. It appears to me that he does things to win the political game and actually doesn't want to hurt his opponents (to use a football analogy he wants to hit them hard enough to make them fumble the ball, but doesn't want them taken off on a stretcher).
I understand that nothing at that level of business, politics, etc is black and white and that people that operate in the gray spectrum at that level will seek to gain every advantage available to them as long as it doesn't cross too far over a line. I fully believe that the President Obama administration crossed that line and used the power of the FBI and DOJ to launch an investigation into the Trump campaign and the personnel associated with it to prevent him from winning the election. Their actions have done serious damage to the lives, reputations, and finances of innocent American Citizens in that quest. To the best of my memory the investigation into the Trump campaign has uncovered illegal acts by some, but none were linked to direct campaign actions or involved being an agent for a foreign government. The others that got found out for their extracurricular activities that crossed the legal lines deserve what they got, but it still worries me that they weren't investigated for those actions prior to joining the campaign effort. I am afraid of where this might go in the future when allegiance to the political party is more important than allegiance to the nation and the lines that those people are willing to cross moves more and more to the extreme.
When I compare those two actions of the Obama and Trump Administrations it looks like President Trump asking the leader of another country to do something that is based on fact (Biden's actions were suspect by any measure of analysis) and helps his campaign efforts pales in comparison to the Obama administration conducting investigations on American Citizens that it appears they knew were innocent of the charges to further their political agendas.
There is very little an innocent citizen can do when facing the might, power, and resources of the US Government. From my viewpoint the worst that the Ukrainian announcement would have done would have been that Joe Biden doesn't win the nomination and goes back to what ever he was doing the day before he announced he was going to run for President. He likely would not be facing a prison sentence, living with a damaged reputation, or experiencing long term financial ruin. I really believe that what the Trump administration did was not very significant in terms of what seems to go on behind the scenes at the national level of political campaigning everyday.
While I believe it was wrong for President Trump to mix his presidential duties and his campaign actions, I am not naive enough to think it is the first time that things like this have happened in Washington DC at that level of governance. The fact that the Obama Administration leveraged the FBI and DOJ against the Trump campaign and that prominent democrat leaders were working towards impeachment as soon as Trump completed the inauguration ceremony makes it hard for me to believe that impeachment was the proper action in this case and not a continuation of using significant Government capabilities (FBI, DOJ, Congressional Impeachment) as political tools against your opposing party. I have hoped that the moderates from the democratic party would learn from the President Clinton impeachment and not pursue that as a course of action if it was a purely partisan act. I believe this whole situation has further eroded the standards of working with people with views different than yours that allowed for the civil governance of the nation by the elected officials from the political parties. I am very afraid that they have set a new standard for how the parties will deal with each other from now on.
A good day!
