If you want a short, excellent, and esoteric read, Georges Dumézil’s Mitra-Varuna is for you. tl;dr: Indo-European politics is structured around a conflict between a singular leader who looks forward and a college of elders who look backward, usually at some text. In this scheme, legislatures are bastard hybrids; and the US’s bicameral legislative system is doubly bastard. Upshot: Congress is — as we’re seeing — ¯\(ツ)/¯. The real tension is between the President and the courts. Everyone’s all like OO! OO! MCCONNELL AND GRAHAM!, but if there’s a Senate trial it’ll be run by ROBERTS. He’ll do so not just according to the procedures hammered out in Congress but also with a deep understanding of how myriad technical questions will play out in the courts — and they will. I think he’ll also clearly recognize that Trump has already floated a half-dozen resentful arguments about why elections are bogus, why Congress and the Dems are corrupt to the core and treasonous, why Mueller robbed him of two years, why the impeachment is an attempted coup, why his term should be extended, and so on. So brace yourselves for a whole lotta noise about ROBERTS in the coming months, along with the usual chorus of just-add-water experts.
(NYT)