Subject: Re: Institutionalized corruption
Sure. But was it bigger than the war protests? I had a teenage brother of draft age, and I can tell you that I was far more aware of the war protests than I was Watergate (granted, I'm thinking of '72-'73, since my brother died before the impeachment, though not before the incident itself). The country was convulsing with anti-war demonstrations.

Yes, it was probably bigger than the anti-war protests. Certainly at the time - the anti-war protests had ended by early 1973. Remember, the U.S. had pretty much ended our active involvement in the war by March of 1973. It had been nearly two years since the had been "convulsing" with anti-war demonstrations - and even those demonstrations had been winding down alongside Nixon's winding down the troop levels in the early 1970's.

And while the anti-war protests loom large in our cultural depictions of the Vietnam Era - especially cultural depictions aimed at baby boomers - contemporary polling shows that they only had a moderate impact on public opinion. To be sure, domestic popular opinion had turned against the war, but student protests had only a modest role in that. And, again, by March 1973 that was all pretty much done.

As I said in another post, I would admire (and expect) officials to do what we elected them to do.

As would most people. But people disagree on what it is "we elected them to do." Some folks want them to form an independent and principled evaluation of what the right course of action is and pursue that, even if it runs against the interests of the people who elected them. Others want them to fight like heck for the side of the folks who put them in office, and not betray the trust of their voters by letting the other side win without a fight. We all want to believe that those two things are never in conflict - but as we see in the Redistricting Wars, sometimes that's not true.

There is sometimes a difference between what is right and what is politically advantageous. That's all I'm saying when I point out that it would not be politically advantageous to the GOP to impeach and convict Trump. It might be the right thing to do, but it would spark a civil war in the party that would hinder its political prospects.