There is no cure for a stupid electorate. Just pretend the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose that HRC were president and Jim Jordan were Chair of the Judiciary Committee. Remember Bengazi? Surely, HRC could be accused of doing something after the election to cover up what happened there. She doesn’t have to have done it; she just has to be accused of doing it. So she and her troops get called before all sorts of committees, and she tells them to pound sand, and then we hear how impeachment hearings are “the only way” to get to the bottom of all this.

All of this with an election coming up in which the people can react to what the free press has learned. At that point, we find out whether we can govern ourselves. Impeachment in the first term is too extraordinary a remedy even for this disaster of a president. The president is stonewalling Congress for all to see. Do we care? If we do, he’ll be gone in 2020. If not, why should Congress?

Generally, I support a strong executive answerable only in impeachment. It simply makes no sense for anyone in the executive branch to have the authority to prosecute their boss. That means that a any senior member of the DOJ chain of command must be removed from office before being prosecuted or investigated by underlings. Failure of the president to remove such an official who has committed a crime is, in my view, an impeachable offense. But the proof must be politically obtained, i.e., the fifth amendment presumption that nothing can be inferred from silence does not apply. If there is enough smoke, the people should cause the official to lose the office.

Even then, I support executive privilege, and I do not believe it can be waived in the way that attorney-client privilege can be waived. The attorney privilege exists to enable the judicial branch to operate effectively, not to protect the separation of powers under the Constitution. These are very different purposes, and so very different rules apply. To the extent that the president allows an official to testify to a special counsel, the president has not “waived” executive privilege; he has simply not asserted it as to that particular appearance and the particular evidence that the official has offered. But the privilege, in my view, remains absolute as to any future demands of any other branch of government. A member of the executive branch cannot be forced to answer to another branch. (The Nixon tapes case was wrongly decided. It’s the law, but I’m talking about what the law should be, not what the Court says it is.)

These views are not partisan. Indeed, they are based on my observation of the Bengazi hearings, which were a travesty. They are the model of what Congress should not be deemed empowered to do. If the executive wants to appear, not under oath — the oath itself is a violation of the separation of powers —then that’s a decision the executive can make. But the decision to appear or not should have no legal consequences, only political ones. Our electoral system must be effective to weed out bad actors, including those who appear unwilling to tell Congress about things the American people actually want to know about. If it isn’t, then we are doomed. As I said, there is no cure for a stupid electorate.