Let's not forget that Obama made a quid pro quo deal just like Trump's — and that Republicans said it was grounds for impeachment

The declassified transcript of President Trump’s conversation with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and the just-released whistleblower complaint have proven to be Rorschach Tests. As with so much of Trump’s output, there is enough ambiguity here that his opponents and defenders alike are claiming vindication.

“The transcript and the Justice Department’s acting in a rogue fashion in being complicit in the President’s lawlessness confirm the need for an impeachment inquiry,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) accused Pelosi of having been “catfished into a politically fatal impeachment proceeding based on rumors, based on faulty evidence and based on a bloodlust for the president.” The transcript, Gaetz claimed, proved there had been “no quid-pro-quo … for anything, much less military aid.”

Strictly speaking, Gaetz is correct. There is no explicit quid pro quo to be found anywhere in the transcript. Rather, it must be inferred from the sequence of topics discussed and from the conversation’s larger context.

As David French explains, early in the call Trump complains that Ukraine has not returned the United States' good will. This framing establishes Trump’s expectation of negotiated reciprocity. After Zelensky says his country will soon be ready to purchase more Javelin missiles—a vital tool in Ukraine’s defense against Russian belligerence—Trump immediately describes the “favor” he expects in return: cooperation with the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. Had Trump stopped there, the exchange would have been perfectly legitimate. But he then requests that Zelensky work with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, to investigate Joe Biden for allegedly abusing his power to shut down an investigation into Burisma Holdings, which employed his son, Hunter.

Given that Trump ordered a hold on $391 million in military aid to Ukraine a week before the July 25^th call, it is all but certain that a quid pro quo was intended. And, as alleged in the whistleblower complaint, senior administration officials were alarmed by the conversation. The Wall Street Journal reports that earlier this month Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) met with Zelensky and other officials in Ukraine who, according to Murphy, “worried the aid that was being cut off to Ukraine by the president was a consequence for their unwillingness at the time to investigate the Bidens.” (Zelensky has subsequently denied that he was pressured.)

Whether Trump has actually undermined our national security or merely placed it at risk, he is hardly the first American president to manipulate foreign policy for the sake of influencing an election.

The most egregious example is former President Barack Obama’s quid pro quo with Moscow during his 2012 campaign for re-election. On March 26^th, at the Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, Obama pledged to outgoing Russian president and Putin-proxy Dmitri Medvedev that if Moscow gave him “space” (i.e., forestalled antagonizing its neighbors) he would have greater “flexibility” after the election regarding concessions on missile defense shields in Europe. Mitt Romney’s campaign had emphasized the dangers posed by Russia’s escalating bellicosity, and Obama’s softness toward Russia (even after its invasion of Georgia) was an electoral liability.

This quid pro quo produced devastating consequences. It further signaled Obama’s unwillingness to check Russian aggression, delayed the installation of missile-defense shields in Europe, and arguably encouraged Russia’s annexation of Crimea two years later.

Republicans naturally viewed Obama’s “hot mic” pledge as a “betrayal of our national security and [a] betrayal of the integrity of our elections,” to co-opt Pelosi’s phrasing when announcing an impeachment inquiry this week. Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) decried the “secret deal” Obama had struck with the Russians, seeming to view it as verging on treason. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) compared it to the West’s passivity after the Second World War, which allowed the USSR to seize Poland, East Germany, and a host of other nations.

After pro-Russian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the reliably intemperate Allen West (R-FL) went further: "The blood on Vladimir Putin’s hands was poured by Barack Obama, who is indirectly responsible, accountable and no different than Neville Chamberlain’s weakness in the face of the 20th Century maniacal dictator Adolf Hitler.”

During the past three years, Trump apologists have often employed Obama’s “hot mic” gaffe as a tu quoque argument against Democrats’ charge of Russian collusion. By some strange alchemy, the incident was simultaneously evidence that Trump wasn’t guilty of collusion, that Democrats care about Russia’s machinations only when it serves their pursuit of domestic power, and that Obama was the real colluder with Russia. It is now being trotted out to both minimize and normalize Trump’s behavior towards Ukraine. “It wasn’t a big deal when Obama did it,” this perversely amnesiac sentiment goes, “so it shouldn’t be a big deal now.”

No honest person can argue that Obama’s quid pro quo with Medvedev and Putin was less consequential, less damning, less impeachable than Trump’s with Zelensky. The key difference was that Obama’s pledge was of a piece with his existing Russophilic foreign policy, whereas Trump’s behavior signals a willingness to deviate from his policy of robust support for Ukraine—solely for the sake of electoral advantage. Morally speaking, there is a chasm separating the principles at work in each man’s actions.

Logical and moral consistency demands that any Republican who was troubled by Obama’s behavior be just as troubled (if not more so) by Trump’s. And any Republican who deemed Obama’s offense worthy of impeachment must now apply the same standard to the leader of their party—this even though, were the roles reversed, their opponents would almost certainly not do the same.

The only alternative is to embrace incoherence.