Can a President Be Impeached and Run Again
Alert, a major set on of the history nerd is coming:
Existence smart MinnPost readers, I'm guessing that most of you could reply the trivia question: Who were the merely 2 presidents to be impeached? Answer: Andrew Johnson, who served out Lincoln'due south second term after the bump-off, and Beak Clinton. Nope, can't count Richard Nixon on a technicality. He resigned before the House could vote up the articles of impeachment.
And you probably know that, although in mutual parlance impeachment is ofttimes used to refer to the removal a president from office, in fact the impeachment is simply the offset step — equivalent to an indictment — which triggers a trial in the Senate. No president has ever been impeached, convicted and removed.
And chances are, y'all recall what Bill Clinton did to get impeached, so nosotros won't talk about that in front end of the children. Only unless you are a serious history nerd, I doubtable that you can't — without benefit of the Google — recall what Andrew Johnson did to get impeached (and to come much closer — within one vote actually — to existence convicted and removed from office).
And so I'll tell you the trivia: Andrew Johnson was impeached considering he fired a disloyal member of his cabinet (disloyal in the sense that he was refusing to acquit out the president's policies and was actively conspiring with the congressional majority against the president).
This level of disloyalty, I would posit, is non a terrible reason for firing a guy. And I would postulate (having already posited) that such a firing would be a pretty poor excuse for the kind of high crime and misdemeanor required past the Constitution for the impeachment and removal of a president. Feel free to differ.
I can (and plan to) explain a bit further. Only first I suppose you are entitled to some clue every bit to why we might desire to think about this aboriginal history in the year 2011 (other than that it is an exciting and interesting chapter of U.S. history and every year is a expert year to larn about those, eh?). But one of the norms (which I detest) of the news business is that in social club to write about anything that happened longer than 24 hours agone, you have to have some way to tie it to what'south happenin' at present.
And so here's what's happenin' now
Our national government is currently performing poorly (understatement) in the category of cooperation between parties and beyond branches. Republicans in the Senate take recently fabricated unprecedentedly frequent use of the filibuster (a tool, past the way, which is not provided past the Constitution) to forestall legislation from coming to a vote.
Democrats (in Congress and the White House) ginned up a very catchy and edgy just technically legal utilise of the "reconciliation" maneuver to sneak terminal passage of the big wellness care nib by the Republican delay. Most bills involving taxing or spending (or, God aid us, the debt ceiling) have been a cause for full partisan warfare leading to brinksmanship, a near-default and a downgrading of the U.S. regime's credit rating.
Because of the inability of Democrats and Republicans to agree on a plan to do something that both parties favor (reducing the projected time to come arrears), the Congress devised a bizarre self-threat to make spending cuts that both parties will dislike unless a Supercommittee can come up with a package of cuts that both parties like better.
President Obama has essentially alleged that nothing he considers a constructive footstep to deal with the nation's severe economic problems tin be accomplished if it has to go through Congress, so he has just recently launched a series of small policies (the change in payback requirements for college loans, for case) that he has obviously discovered he can exercise by executive order. (Evidently this is within the reach of such presidential powers, although I think I would hold with Congressman John Kline that this is not the manner such things are supposed to get done. )
And speaking of both impeachment and cross-co-operative power struggles: Although it hasn't gotten much attending, Newt Gingrich has used his campaign for president to suggest that the federal judiciary could exist fabricated to see reason if a few federal judges (those that Gingrich believes have misinterpreted the Constitution) were impeached or perhaps informed that Congress retains the power to do abroad with entire courts. (Jefferson did it, Gingrich says.) And and so in that location was Rick Perry's proffer that secession isn't really out of the question in the 21st century.
The American system of authorities is far far far from perfect and I can think of several structural reforms that I would support. The framers' system has held upwardly remarkably well for two and a half centuries, all things considered. But in the absence of cooperation and compromise across party and branch lines, weird, ugly things outset to happen as hyperpartisans start to scour the rulebook for tricks they can pull that bend just don't quite break the rules.
Loftier crimes and misdemeanors
At that place'due south just been one consummate breakdown, in 1861, when Abe Lincoln's ballot (on a platform that said that the federal government had no power to abolish slavery in whatever of the then-existing states) acquired 11 states to secede from the union. Just 1 senator from one of those states (Sen. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, himself a slaveholder) alleged his loyalty to the union, stayed in the Senate and was later appointed by Lincoln as military machine governor of Tennessee.
The war lasted and then long that Lincoln came up for reelection before it was over. It's a little remembered fact that Lincoln – the get-go-ever Republican president — did not run for reelection equally a "Republican." A faction of the party carve up off and the master portion, which stuck with Lincoln, called itself the National Marriage Party. Hoping to concenter the votes of Democrats who supported the war effort, the political party nominated Johnson (who had been a Democrat) as Lincoln's running mate.
The NUP ticket won, of course, only Lincoln was assassinated 5 weeks later on the inauguration, simply as the war was catastrophe, and Johnson became president with almost a total four-year term ahead and a term in which the terms of the readmission and "reconstruction" of the seceded states would have to exist piece of work out.
Although Lincoln had outlined a adequately moderate policy for dealing with the conquered Due south, the "Radical Republicans" who dominated the Congress had much more aggressive ideas.
If y'all go into the substance of the thing, the case tin can quickly go morally confusing. Johnson was a virulent racist. Although he did not favor secession, he likewise did not agree with the Rad Repub agenda to force the southern states to respect the rights of the newly freed slaves. He argued that blacks were "corrupt in principle" and should never exist given the right to vote. He vetoed the Rad Repub bills. They overrode the vetoes (on 1 party-line vote after another). The Rad Repubs had two-thirds majorities in both houses considering, recollect, the southern states weren't represented.
Johnson used his control of appointments to put men in charge in the occupied Southward who shared his views. By some accounts, the tension betwixt the visions of Johnson versus the Rad Repubs was so hot that the Civil State of war might accept broken back out, although that seems far-fetched. In i five-month period, Johnson fired 1,352 postmasters effectually the country who were loyal Republicans and were not sympathetic to his policies.
Frustrated at Johnson'south use of his appointment powers to frustrate their program, the Repubs passed the Tenure of Role Human activity, which prohibited the president from firing any confirmed appointees without the Senate's agreement. That meant Johnson couldn't even decide who was in and out of his own cabinet. (Johnson vetoed the Tenure of Part nib, of grade, only was apace overridden. Years later, after Johnson was long gone, the Supreme Court did strike down the Tenure Act every bit an unconstitutional congressional usurpation of presidential power.).
Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a holdover from Lincoln'southward cabinet, vehemently opposed Johnson'southward Reconstruction policies and used his place in the Chiffonier to spy for and collaborate with congressional Republicans. Johnson fired him on a Friday. The following Mon, by a party-line vote of 128-47, the House impeached Johnson without waiting for manufactures of impeachment, which were drawn upward after.
Unfit to be president
There were 11 counts, 9 of which repeated over and again that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act by firing Stanton. The final two accused him of bringing Congress into "disgrace, ridicule, hatred, contempt and reproach" by speeches he had given, and the 11th summarized the other 10 and said Johnson's bear demonstrated his unfitness to exist president.
Information technology seems pretty unlikely that Johnson's offenses meet an objective standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors" which is what the Constitution establishes as necessary for impeachment and removal. Only the Congress had had a bellyful of this accidental (and plainly obnoxious) president pursuing policies that he presumably felt were in the best interests of the country but which they felt strongly were not.
The trial of Johnson on the impeachment charges took two months on the Senate floor. Johnson wanted to nourish to defend himself merely his lawyers insisted that the sight of him would energize the pro-impeachment forces.
More than two-thirds of Senate members were Republicans. Seven would have to vote against the political party line to save Johnson'due south presidency. As the vote approached, several expressed reservations.
Sen. Lyman Trumbull, an Illinois Republican and a friend of Lincoln, voted to acquit. He said that if Johnson could be removed without having committed any real crimes or misdemeanors, and then "no future President will exist safe who happens to differ with the majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate on any mensurate accounted by them of import." I hate to prove undue sympathy for the racist Johnson, only I have to admit that Trumbull's indicate works for me.
Kansas Republican Edmund G. Ross was the seventh Repub to break ranks, which was merely enough that the terminal Senate vote of 35-19 to remove Johnson fell one vote short of the ii-thirds required by the Constitution. None of the seven Republicans voted against the party line was always reelected.
When John F. Kennedy's ghostwriter Ted Sorenson wrote the Pulitzer Prize Winning "Profiles in Backbone" about smashing acts of political principle, Ross was included every bit one of the case studies. But more contempo scholarship ("Impeached" by David O. Stewart) concludes that Ross was receiving offers of various bribes and appointments in exchange for his vote and playing the sides off against each other. In general, the level of bribery available was then prevalent that Stewart ended that votes for Johnson's acquittal "were purchased for with political deals, patronage promises and fifty-fifty greenbacks."
Johnson beat the confidence by ane vote and served out what was left of his term, returned to Tennessee, a hero for his defense force of white supremacy, and was reelected to the Senate in 1874. When he died in 1875, he was buried with his head resting on a re-create of the Constitution. How touching.
OK. Must. Stop. Return. To. Present.
I've been fairly depressed about all of Washington'south recent deviations from the happy story nosotros tell our kids in civics class about how our system works. It's really much hard to take action than to block it. The boundaries of each branch'southward power is not really equally clear equally we like to believe. The system really doesn't work without compromise. But it doesn't quite autumn apart either. At least so far. Which is pretty amazing.
And nosotros've been through worse. Much worse. And here nosotros however are.
Source: https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2011/11/why-president-andrew-johnson-was-impeached-and-why-we-should-care-today/
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