经济学人:约翰逊语言专栏--特朗普弹劾战中情绪化的用词(3)

“Bribery” looked the better bet. The constitution specifically mentions it as an impeachable offence. In federal law, any official who demands or seeks “anything of value” in return for “being influenced in the performance of any official act” takes part in bribery. Mr Trump’s critics maintained that dangling a White House visit before Ukraine’s president, and suspending military aid, were official acts, and that the investigations he wanted in return were “of value”.

In the end, Democrats balked, and chose a vaguer charge instead: “abuse of power”, plus “obstruction of Congress”. These, they say, meet the constitution’s standard of “high Crimes and Misdemeanours”. Impeachable deeds need not be statutory crimes of the kind tried in a court, scholars note. Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard, told the House Judiciary Committee that the adjective “high” refers not to the gravity of the offence, but to the status of the president’s office. Yet in rowing back on “bribery” and “extortion” Democrats may have betrayed a nervousness about levels of proof. In preferring “abuse of power”, which has no legal definition, they will seem to some voters to have plumped for a purely political case (if the underlying offence is vague, Republicans of all kinds will be willing to forgive obstruction of Congress). All of which means that, in the clash of rhetorical language and the technical kind, the rhetoric may turn out to be more important. And that is Mr Trump’s home turf.