Meanwhile, back at the impeachment trial …

You do remember the impeachment trial?

Before the evening of January 3, 2020, American political discourse revolved around the intricacies of a Senate trial on articles of impeachment preferred against the president of the United States, and yet to be transmitted from the House to the Senate by the House’s crafty speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

On the evening of January 3, 2020, one of Iran’s top generals was taken out by a missile launched from an American drone. Neat, surgical, and with real-time footage of a mass of twisted metal being consumed by fire.

The Iranians were not amused.

The events of that evening moved impeachment stories off the front page and the impending trial was no longer the lead story on the evening news.

While the trial of an American president is a juicy story, the possibility of another Middle East war is even juicier. The story was irresistible to a media whose battle cry translates loosely as “If it bleeds, it leads.”

In political science jargon, a “rally point” is defined as “a significant jump in presidential approval that occurs during a national crisis; the term refers to the tendency of Americans to ‘rally round’ the flag and the chief executive when the nation is in trouble.”

It is not a stretch to interpret the facts of the story and the reaction to those facts as describing one such “rally point.”

“Rally points” are intended to describe a spontaneous reaction to unplanned and unfolding events. Nevertheless, the temptation exists, given the political benefits, and the ability of a rally point to distract from other, less agreeable, subjects, to artificially manufacture such an event for the positive, albeit temporary, political points to be gained.

As noted in the definition, we Americans are a patriotic bunch. In times of crisis, we rally around our flag, and our president.

But what if the crisis that animates our patriotic response is a crisis that our own leaders created in the first place?

This is not the first time during this administration that the war drums have begun to beat.

In 2017-18, the country was fed the narrative that we were on a collision course with North Korea. Matters became so charged with predictions of impending doom that a rogue erroneous warning of missiles approaching Hawaii pulled folks off the beach and sent them scurrying for the fallout shelters.

In the end, after months of escalating tensions, American and Korean leadership kissed and made up. Crisis over – for now.

Within four days of the Bagdad Barbeque, Iran had launched missiles at U.S. Air Force bases in Iraq suspected to have been the source of the avenging drone. The attack seemed targeted to  minimize American bloodshed, and, indeed, no casualties were announced, which is more than can be said about the results of the drone attack.

American leadership took advantage of Tehran’s limited response to reduce the tone of its rhetoric from apocalyptic to merely bellicose – a tone with which the American people have become familiar, and relatively immune to overreacting, over the last few years.

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that we are witnessing a manufactured rally point. I am confident in saying this because I cannot conceive of an American leader, worthy of the office they hold, who would jerk around the American people in such a manner for political gain.

This realization allows me to sleep quietly through the night, trips to the bathroom excluded.

I must admit, however, that sometimes in the wee hours, the words of James Madison, founding father and primary author of the Constitution, rattle around in my brain: “Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant.”

I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’ …