In his 1955 bestseller, Profiles in Courage, John F. Kennedy, then a Senator from Massachusetts, recounted the histories of several former members of the U.S. Senate whom he held out as exemplars of what he believed to be the highest civic virtue—political courage. In the book's final chapter, Kennedy famously wrote: "For without belittling the courage with which men have died, we should not forget those acts of courage with which men … have lived … . A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality."

I recently had occasion to reread a chapter in Kennedy's masterpiece, the one concerning Edmund Ross, the Senator from Kentucky whose deciding vote during the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson led both to Johnson's acquittal and the end of Ross' career. It speaks directly to the recent outcome in Donald Trump's impeachment trial and about the Republican members of the Senate responsible for it.

At issue in Johnson's impeachment trial was the Tenure of Office Act. Enacted over Johnson's veto in early 1867, it prevented the president from removing from office any executive branch official whose position had initially required Senate confirmation. Johnson, who like Lincoln had sought reconciliation with the South, feared that Edward Stanton, Lincoln's appointee as Secretary of War, would align himself with the Radical Republicans who sought to impose a harsh military rule over the vanquished Confederacy, and consequently, in clear violation of the Tenure of Office Act, fired him. The Radical Republicans, eager for an excuse to rid themselves of Johnson, saw to it that he was impeached as a consequence.

Edmund Ross was no fan of Johnson or his policies, especially those concerning Reconstruction. But Ross also believed that the Tenure of Office Act amounted to congressional overreach, an unwarranted encroachment on the power of the chief executive, and was blatantly unconstitutional. And so, notwithstanding his assumption that it would destroy his political career, Ross adhered to the dictates of his conscience, casting the deciding vote against the removal of Johnson and in favor of the latter's acquittal by the Senate. Ross's assumption about his political career proved to be entirely correct. He was immediately pilloried in the papers as "a miserable poltroon and a traitor," referred to as "the traitor Ross," denied his party's backing for another run at the Senate seat he had held, and, Kennedy says in his book, when "[Ross] returned to Kansas in 1871, he and his family suffered social ostracism, physical attack, and near poverty." It thus probably came as little solace to Ross when the Tenure of Office Act was repealed by Congress in 1887. And, of course, he never lived to see the Supreme Court's decision in Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926) where the court stated in dicta "that the Tenure of Office Act of 1867, insofar as it attempted to prevent the President from removing executive officers who had been appointed by him by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, was invalid." Nonetheless, Ross will be remembered as a statesman, a man of principle, a Senator who believed that some things, beyond his own reelection, were worth standing up for.

But that was then; this is now. Now we have a chief executive who cynically abused power and in doing so simultaneously broke the law. The evidence is overwhelming, indisputable really, that he held up hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine that had been authorized by Congress as well as a White House meeting with Ukraine's new president until the latter announced that his country was opening one criminal investigation into the Bidens, father and son, and another into a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine—as opposed to Russia—hacked the Democratic National Committee's server during the 2016 election. In doing so, he compromised our national security in order to gain an unfair advantage in the 2020 election. And, as reported last month by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office, the Trump administration's decision to freeze the release of security assistance to Ukraine violated the Impoundment Control Act, Title 2, United States Code, Chapter 17B, a law specifically enacted to prevent presidents from doing exactly what Trump did here: undermining congressional determinations as how taxpayer dollars should be spent.

The response of the Republican caucus in the Senate to all of this? All but one—Mitt Romney—voted to acquit Trump after a rump impeachment trial. And why? Because in contrast to Edmund Ross, today's Republican senators stand for nothing except seeing to their own reelection. Their party, until recently, supported free trade; now they support Trump's tariffs and trade wars. Their party, until recently, demanded fiscal austerity; now they have passed Trump's huge tax cuts for the super-rich, tax cuts that have blown holes in both the deficit and the national debt from which the nation may never fully recover. Their party once championed conservation—think Theodore Roosevelt (national parks) and Richard Nixon (the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts); now they are so in bed with the fossil fuel industry that they are willfully aiding and abetting the destruction of our planet's fragile ecosystem. And finally, their party was once insistent on "law and order"; now, by acquitting Trump after a trial sans witnesses—an absolute mockery of justice that they engineered—they have seen to it that the law, insofar as it applies to our chief executive, is just a quaint thing of the past. John Adams' maxim that we are "a government of laws and not of men" is something they trot out on state occasions, but which has no real meaning for them. The only thing that does have meaning for them is holding on to their jobs, their power, and their darling popularity. And they are fearful that if they do anything, anything to cross their dear leader—let alone remove him from office—they will be mocked my him and his MAGA-millions on Twitter, primaried by even more stalwart Trump supporters backed by Koch brothers money, and ultimately put out to pasture. If, as per Kennedy, Edmund Ross was an exemplar of human morality and a profile in courage, today's Republican Senators are just the opposite: exemplars of human immorality or amorality—take your pick—and, unquestionably, profiles in cowardice.

Elliott B. Jacobson was an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan from 1980-1985 and an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1985-2017.