ByRobert Philpot, Robert Philpot
v Both Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky owe their election in no small measure to television.
But whereas the US president rode the brutal, back-stabbing and cut-throat world of The Apprentice to the White House, the show which made the name of Ukraine’s Jewish president was rather more uplifting.
In the hugely popular Servant of the People, Mr Zelensky plays a teacher, Vasyl Holoborodko, who is elected president after a video of him ranting against corruption uploaded by one of his pupils goes viral.
During this spring’s election campaign, which he won by a landslide, the liberal-minded former comedian essentially played the role of Mr Holoborodko, promising to clean up Ukrainian politics, and saying he was “just a simple person who came to break the system”.
The reason for the success of Servant of the People is not hard to discern. As one of his co-stars, Aleksey Kiryushchenko, told The Economist earlier this year: “The show is an experiment. We see what happens when you drop an idealistic person into dirty politics.”
A telephone call with Mr Trump in July showed the real-life Ukranian president just how dirty politics can be.
In that conversation the US president allegedly attempted to bribe Mr Zelensky’s government with US aid in return for him helping to dig up dirt on his likely Democrat challenger in next year’s election, Joe Biden.
Its disclosure last week landed Mr Trump at the centre of an impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives; one that — even if it does not result in his removal from office — will dog him as he runs for re-election.
The president’s “nemesis”, in the words of Politico, is Jewish Democrat Adam Schiff. As the party’s leading member on the House Intelligence Committee, Mr Schiff did much to probe the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia during the 2016 election campaign.
Elevated to the chairmanship of the committee when the Democrats took control of the House last November, Mr Schiff has played a key part uncovering this latest scandal.
Earlier in September he revealed that a whistleblower had made a complaint against someone in the executive branch. He then discovered through his committee that Michael Atkinson — who is, in effect, the watchdog for the US intelligence community — had been prevented from disclosing the complaint, even though he had deemed the complaint credible and of “urgent concern”, to Congress.
It appeared to be in contravention of the law, and Mr Schiff won his battle last week to force the president’s acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire to hand over the whistleblower’s complaint.
Mr Schiff has also helped to change the political weather among congressional Democrats on the subject of impeachment. For months, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has resisted efforts by some on the left of her party to start the process of impeaching Mr Trump.
With her acute political antennae, the Speaker has worried that, with public opinion largely hostile, such an effort may play well to the Democratic base but end up costing the party dear. She is especially concerned that it will imperil the 2020 re-election chances of those Democrats who snatched seats from the Republicans last November and on whose fortunes the Democrats’ House majority rests.
But Mr Schiff’s declaration last week that the president may have “crossed the rubicon” unleashed a torrent of previously sceptical Democrats calling for an impeachment inquiry.
One of the first two moderate Democrats to break cover was Jewish entrepreneur Dean Phillips, who took a Minnesota seat off the Republicans that his party has not held since the early 1960s.
Shortly after, two other Jewish House members, Elissa Slotkin and Elaine Luria, joined five of their “national security Democrats” colleagues — so-called because of their military and intelligence backgrounds — in backing an impeachment inquiry.
Ms Slotkin won a district last November in Michigan that Mr Trump carried by nearly seven points in 2016, while Ms Luria captured a formerly Republican seat in Virginia which is home to the Norfolk naval base. Ms Pelosi reportedly consulted the group before she announced the formal probe into Mr Trump was beginning.
While the investigation will no doubt throw up plenty of examples of the “dirty politics” that Mr Zelensky’s fictional character aspired to overcome, it may also highlight some of its more noble aspects.
Ms Slotkin’s local newspaper suggested last week that Republican attacks on her — she is accused by opponents of throwing off her moderate garb and siding with the “rabid” Democratic base in its war against Mr Trump – underline her electoral vulnerability.
Ms Slotkin’s example, the newspaper argued, “is one all self-described elected leaders should aspire to. For those who still care to know, this is what political courage looks like”.