The End of Impeachment

The worst thing that could happen to the power of the Congress to impeach a president and remove him from office appears to be happening now. If it hasn’t already occurred. It’s become politicized—in a way that robs what should be a solemn process of its seriousness, even its legitimacy. Impeachment may have already become defunct as an effective instrument for dealing with a crooked or out-of-control president.

This is as constitutionally serious as one political party’s efforts to prevent a significant number of the other’s voters from casting a ballot in elections, which has in fact defined the outcome of races in some states. Each form of getting around the rules is a subversion of the basics of the American democratic system.

Opposed as I am to the “both sides” tendency of much of the press and many political observers, it has to be said that members of both parties are, perhaps unintentionally (as if that matters much), destroying the possibility of a fair and dispassionate use of the impeachment power—one so important to the Founders that they cited it first in Article II, which established the presidency, before they listed presidential powers….

The difference between the impeachments of Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton spells the difference between an impeachment that’s widely accepted by the country and one that is largely written off as a useless partisan exercise. In 1974 Peter Rodino, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, and his top aides made a point of seeking bipartisan agreement on whether Nixon should be impeached; and however they actually felt they proceeded with an outward attitude of more in sorrow, squeezing out the committee Democrats who were openly enthusiastic about impeaching Nixon. They also ruled out Articles of Impeachment based on policy differences—for example, the U.S. expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia—and focused instead on the president’s obstruction of justice and contempt of the Judiciary Committee itself, and a series of actions carried out by Nixon aides that formed a “pattern or practice” that threatened citizens’ privacy and liberties (by, for example, wiretapping or siccing the IRS on specified “enemies” of the president).  

This tempered approach on the part of the Democratic leaders of the House Judiciary Committee enabled Republicans to also vote for Nixon’s impeachment. If Mueller’s report doesn’t lead to a radically changed view of the president on the part of Republicans and a substantial number of those who voted for him in 2016 (this can’t be ruled out), such a bonding of Republicans with Democrats over impeaching Trump and driving him from office is inconceivable.

And unless there’s a major political shift on the part of Trump’s backers, the Republican-led pursuit of the ouster of Bill Clinton will stand as the transitional nexus of past impeachments and the putative one to come. Led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, the House impeachment of Clinton was a nakedly partisan exercise, based on a lie the trapped Clinton told a grand jury. It wasn’t admirable (nor was his sexual behavior literally in the Oval Office and the study next door), but it didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and in the Senate the vote to strip Clinton of the presidency fell well short of the necessary two-thirds. ...