A pro-impeachment rally outside the Capitol last week. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
By Charles Lane
Opinion writer
The United States seems headed toward the fourth-ever presidential impeachment effort. What can past cases tell us about how this one might develop?
Republicans complain that the Democratic House of Representatives is being partisan in taking on President Trump, but that’s the historical norm. Presidents Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard M. Nixon in 1974 and Bill Clinton in 1998-1999 all faced a House controlled by their partisan foes.
Nor was the intra-Democrat struggle in which a pro-impeachment faction prevailed over more hesitant members unprecedented. “Radical” as the House Republicans who voted to impeach Johnson in 1868 might have been, they did so only after first failing to pass other proposed articles of impeachment (including one member’s claim, in January 1867, that Johnson had “corruptly interfered with elections”).
The framers of the Constitution anticipated all of the above. Therefore, impeachment cannot end with a conviction in the Senate and removal from office unless enough of a president’s partisan supporters agree with the charges to form a two-thirds majority.
Nixon resigned before he was formally impeached when a critical mass of Republicans in both houses abandoned him ahead of an inevitable Senate trial. Clinton, by contrast, won acquittal from a Republican-majority Senate in early 1999. The GOP balked after Democrats gained seats in the House in the 1998 midterm elections, largely due to a backlash against impeachment.
History also suggests that the economy affects an incumbent’s vulnerability. Nixon faced impeachment amid what was then the worst recession since World War II, coupled with double-digit inflation. Conversely, Clinton was presiding over the lowest unemployment rate in 30 years.
The two men’s popularity reflected not only scandals but also the economy; so does Trump’s today. Amid benign but uncertain economic conditions, his job approval rating, roughly 43 percent before the impeachment move, is between Clinton’s in 1999 and Nixon’s in mid-1974.
Trump would be the first president ever impeached during a first term to which he had been elected in his own right. He would also be the first first-term president impeached after the 1951 constitutional amendment limiting a president to two terms.
That amendment subtly raises the bar for impeachment; when the framers created it as an alternative to ordinary electoral ouster of a misbehaving president, unlimited reelection was still possible.
Now the worst-case scenario is that a rogue president could only con the people into an eight-year reign, making impeachment seem that much more reserved for emergencies so bad they can’t be tolerated until the next election, which in this case is just 13 months away.
Johnson was a first-termer, to be sure, but he was finishing the second term of the assassinated president whom he had served as vice president, Abraham Lincoln.
Like the Radical Republican impeachment push against Johnson, the Democratic move against Trump draws much of its energy from a sense not just that the president is abusing his office, but also that he obtained it illegitimately.
Just as Republicans could not reconcile themselves to the fact that a Confederate sympathizer’s bullet put Johnson in the White House, today’s Democrats see impeachment as the right response to a president who won in 2016 with a nudge from Russia but without the most popular votes.
Johnson’s Republican impeachers missed Senate conviction by a single vote, but the effort fatally weakened Johnson’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and galvanized the Republican base for what turned out to be Ulysses S. Grant’s victory in the 1868 presidential election, continued control of the Senate — but a 20-seat reduction in their House majority.
Like the Republican House that gunned for Johnson, today’s Democratic House waited for a plausible basis to reframe its fundamental objection to Trump — he is generally illegitimate, corrupt and unworthy — as a specific impeachable offense.
Certainly, self-serving manipulation of congressionally approved aid to Ukraine would meet any definition of unethical behavior, and possibly violate Trump’s oath to execute the laws “faithfully.” For now, though, his actions can’t quite be expressed as a criminal violation, like Johnson’s breach of the Tenure of Office Act.
In that respect, the Trump impeachment also differs from the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, both of which grew out of activity that allegedly crossed the line of criminal law: the Watergate burglary for Nixon; lying under oath for Clinton.
Unlike those cases, the House now is not following the fact-finding path blazed by a special counsel. A report from a whistleblower, not Robert S. Mueller III, triggered impeachment.
Any subsequent facts are to be found directly by Congress, which is arguably what the Constitution intended, even if this is the first impeachment inquiry to begin without members being asked to authorize it via a recorded vote.
At the end of this road lies a judgment day — in the Senate, at the polls, or both — for Donald Trump, and the voters’ verdict on the impeachers themselves.
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