The Decline of Alan Dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz has joined the Trump impeachment team to argue the constitutional issue. He has taken the position that, even if the allegations are true, they don't meet the constitutional standard for an impeachable offense.

Dershowitz is claiming that to impeach a president, Congress needs to allege a crime. The news media has come up with a clip from 1998 when he said the exact opposite during the Clinton impeachment! The other day Dershowitz attempted to explain this, but not very successfully.

I cannot escape the impression that Dershowitz is in serious decline. He seems to be turning into a caricature of himself, just as Howard Cosell did in his later years. The arrogance and condescending tone of Dershowitz is becoming more and more pronounced. We saw these traits a bit in a TV interview years ago, when he said that he often had to "talk down" to judges, because many judges were unable to grasp the legal arguments he was making. Small wonder, then, that now the judiciary is starting to complain about his condescending attitude.

I saw him on three different Sunday morning shows this past Sunday. In all three he said the same thing, refusing to express an opinion on whether Trump pressured a foreign country to help him in his upcoming campaign, because to Dershowitz this is immaterial. His argument is that the constitutional standard for impeachment is higher than this.

In all three appearances he referred to former Supreme Court justice Benjamin Curtis, who served as Johnson's chief counsel during the Andrew Johnson impeachment, arguing that criminal conduct must be present. In all three he mentioned that Curtis dissented in the Dred Scott case, as if that has anything at all to do with impeachment.

Dershowitz is making a losing argument, and surely he knows this. It is almost like he is trying to see how much nonsense he can get away with. He seemed to be practicing his arguments before the TV cameras, to see how ridiculous he had to sound before people started laughing at him.

The fact that the Trump team is using Dershowitz, a criminal defense attorney, to make the constitutional argument, rather than a constitutional law expert, shows just how weak his argument is. They can't use Jonathan Turley, their constitutional law expert before the House Judiciary Committee, because even Turley admits that asking a foreign government to help in a political campaign would be an impeachable abuse of power. Turley simply doesn't think the allegation has been sufficiently proven.

Howard Cosell, in his later years, burned all his bridges behind him, alienating all of his former friends, and spending his last days holed up in his New York apartment as a recluse. Nobody except his immediate family visited him. I see Dershowitz heading down the same path, filled with the same kind of egomaniacal fantasy of his own greatness as Cosell was.

Sorry, Alan, your time has come and gone.