By Steve Brawner, © 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansas’ two senators will inevitably vote the same way on impeachment – against it, if they haven’t already done so by the time you read this.

Their approaches and rhetoric leading up to the vote has been as different as they are. While Sen. John Boozman has made it clear where he’s headed, his tone has been measured. Sen. Tom Cotton, on the other hand, has been all over the airwaves blasting Democrats and defending President Trump.

But the results will be the same and will come as no surprise, just as there will be no surprises coming from virtually all the other 98 senators. In the final vote, the only questions will be whether any Democrats – maybe Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia – vote to acquit, and whether any Republicans vote to convict, which is highly unlikely. And then we’ll see how it all plays out in this year’s elections.

Senators started the impeachment trial by reciting an oath, as the Constitution requires but doesn’t describe. Using language the Senate adopted in 1798, they swore to “do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.”

It’s time to change that oath. Even in the best of political times – and these are not those – the idea that senators would “do impartial justice” is laughable. The impeachment process has been ongoing for months. Senators have had plenty of time to make up their minds based mostly on political and partisan realities and maybe a little on the evidence. (OK, just kidding about the evidence part.)

This is not a jury trial. If it were, prosecutors and defense attorneys would have removed every senator from the pool and then asked for a change of venue. Unlike jurors, senators cannot possibly remain ignorant of the facts or promise to be objective. And unlike in a public trial, the accused can directly and indirectly influence the jury and can reward and punish its members afterwards.

So let’s strike the part about “impartial justice” so we can reduce the hypocrisy and not put senators in the position of making a promise they can’t keep. “Follow the Constitution and laws” would suffice.

One more thought about impeachment: Let’s stop doing this so often. For the first 200 years of American history, the tool was used once against a president. That was against President Andrew Johnson in the aftermath of the Civil War, when Americans’ differences were so stark that they had spent four years killing each other.

In contrast, it’s been used three times in less than 50 years, and twice in the past 21 years. President Nixon wasn’t impeached, but he would have been for his actions in the Watergate scandal. Then President Clinton was impeached because he lied under oath to a federal grand jury about having a sexual affair. Now, Trump and Ukraine.

I was too young to appreciate the political climate during Watergate, but I have experienced the national tumult associated with the Clinton and Trump impeachments. Both of their actions have merited congressional action – censure, perhaps, in Clinton’s case. In Trump’s case, the president temporarily withheld aid Congress had appropriated while seeming to seek his own political gain from the aid’s recipient. As a supposedly co-equal branch of government, Congress must assert itself in response.

But neither case has merited the use of our nation’s political nuclear button. Impeachment should be reserved for the Constitution’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” – in other words, for when it’s clear the president must go away for the sake of the republic. Otherwise, our system has many ways of constraining a president until the next election or the end of a second term.

The biggest concern with impeachment is this: Where does it stop? It’s only a matter of time before a Democrat occupies the White House and Republicans control the House of Representatives again. If that Democrat doesn’t walk the perfectly straight and narrow, then will we find ourselves in the middle of another impeachment circus? Then will the tables turn again when a Republican is in the Oval Office again?

Let’s break this habit now. From this point forward, let’s regain our reluctance to impeach the president, and instead let voters change the White House’s occupant the way that’s served us well for more than two centuries – through elections.

I hear there’s another one coming up.