“This is truly a sad day for America — it’s a sad week for America,” said Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, his voice choking with emotion when he invoked the president. “He has hung in there, it’s amazing,” he said of Mr. Trump. Mr. Gohmert called for Democrats to apologize to the president for the ordeal they have put him through.
No apology was forthcoming.
If nothing else, these past few weeks have provided a lesson in Capitol Hill expectation-setting. Despite charged testimony, compelling witnesses and some significant revelations, no major players of either party have shown any sign of budging from their partisan bunkers. The proverbial needle, it would appear, has not moved.
No one was expecting any epic acts of statesmanship to break out in the Ways and Means Committee Room on Wednesday night. There was nothing on par with, say, Representative Barbara Jordan, the Texas Democrat who in a Judiciary Committee hearing during the Watergate scandal delivered a memorable homage to the Constitution and a denunciation of President Richard M. Nixon, a defining moment of those proceedings.
Nor were there any surprise breaks from either ranks, as when Representative Lawrence Hogan, the Maryland Republican who had supported Nixon, stunned the White House by announcing he would vote for impeachment, citing the president’s lies, deceptions and “immoral attitudes.”
On Wednesday night, a few Democrats brought up Mr. Hogan, the father of the current Republican governor of Maryland. They said they wished that today’s Republicans would heed his example, assert their independence and stun the prime-time audience with a switch of positions.
It was more rhetorical wish than viable possibility. The five-minute speeches continued, one after another. By 10 p.m., the panel took on a decidedly low-energy posture. Members stared off as the last speakers closed out the evening. There were few interruptions, no surprises and a steady march to the exits.
At 10:20 p.m., after nearly three and a half hours and a few minutes before adjourning the panel for the night, Mr. Nadler and Mr. Collins appeared to share a smile. Maybe one of them cracked a joke. Either way, it was a flash of bipartisan lightness to end things, a tiny surprise, if not a breakthrough.