PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... depicts in depressingly vivid detail Powell’s inability to summon the political and moral courage necessary to check Cheney’s foolhardy plans ... Pick up this engaging book for its insights into Cheney and Powell, but take away the two visions for American leadership they embodied.
Neal Katyal
PositiveThe Washington PostThis book is for the few Americans still open to persuasion ... Katyal’s brief primer, shorter than it would appear given the hefty appendix of widely circulated key documents, offers as concise and evenhanded a summation of the accusations currently weighing on the president (and the nation) as one can find between two covers. Read this if undecided, and as promised you will be far better prepared to offer a thoughtful verdict. It even offers those already armed with firm convictions a list of useful rejoinders to the most oft-heard critiques of Trump’s impeachment, while also pointing out a few weaknesses in the case against the president ... The book, when read comprehensively and not merely ravaged for political talking points, makes a persuasive case. Offering no new evidence or argument, but instead a prosecutor’s summation of information publicly revealed since September, Katyal lays bare what any honest observer should already know: The president deployed the power of his office in pursuit of personal political gain ... [Katyal] knows that an impeachable act need not be a literal crime that exists on the books, yet he reflexively yearns throughout these pages for the simplicity of being able to cite Trump’s violation of a specific federal statute...Legal expertise in this matter clouds the issue, because an impeachment trial in the Senate ultimately employs no standard of proof beyond the body’s determination that it is time for a president to go. This is politics, not law, which is why the founders placed the impeachment process in the legislature’s hands and not the courts\' ... Katyal looks to today’s laws and evidentiary standards, but on such a weighty constitutional issue it is better to seek guidance from those who knew the matter best. The Constitution’s authors would not have applied a yardstick or a veil when considering presidential malfeasance. They’d have pictured a face instead, asking if the deeds under discussion were ones their ideal of a virtuous president, George Washington, would ever have done.