That Time President Trump Was Maybe Going To Be Impeached
I was a first-year political science major at Bowling Green State University (Go Falcons!) when President Clinton was impeached. I remember sitting in my Introduction to American Government class while the professor waxed poetic about how amoral the president was, how he was such a disgrace, and how the House was right to impeach him and the Senate would vote to remove him from office. As a professor now, teaching the exact same class, I see how wrong it was for him to impart his opinions on impressionable young people in their most formative years of political socialization. What’s more, as a political scientist who studies American politics all these years later, I also see how he was dead wrong! Not just because President Clinton was never removed from office (hindsight), but because given the political indicators, it was pretty clear the Senate could not get the required votes to remove him. So, today, as I sit in my academic ivory tower, trying to help my impressionable young students make sense of WTF is happening in this moment in history, I hope you indulge me as I take a walk down the impeachment path and help us all make sense of WTF is happening.
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution provides some guidance for behaviors of the president that may warrant his impeachment and removal from office. Basically, it goes something like this: if the president allegedly bribes someone, commits treason, or does any number of undefined things he can be impeached. “High crimes and misdemeanors” is squishy language at best, but it has been interpreted to include things like abuse of power and obstruction of justice. What doesn’t it include, you ask? Well, as pre-president Donald Trump wondered aloud on Twitter in 2014, “Can a president be impeached for ‘gross incompetence?’” It doesn’t include that.
The process goes something like this: The House of Representatives opens an investigation to collect evidence and draft articles of impeachment alleging the president’s misdoings. If passed by a majority of members, the president is officially impeached. From here, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over a trial in the Senate. A real trial with lawyers and witnesses and everything. It requires 67 votes in the Senate to remove the president from office. In our history, two presidents have been impeached (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton) and no president has ever been removed from office. Now, you may be asking PolySue, “What about Nixon?” Well, he resigned before the House officially voted to impeach him because he knew he was in deep shit.
So, now, fast forward to October 2019, and we have a president under an impeachment inquiry for allegedly pressuring a foreign head of state into digging up dirt on his leading political opponent. What’s more, the president is refusing to comply with the inquiry, stating it not fair. The real argument he and his camp keep reiterating, though, is that Democrats are bitter Hillary Clinton lost (tears) and the impeachment is revenge. He has gone on a Twitter rampage disparaging everyone from the Nancy Pelosi, to the Clintons, to the media. He even went as far as to call the whistleblower a spy and support a claim that his impeachment and removal from office would start a civil war.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few weeks running the list of possible scenarios in my head: impeachment inquiry with no actual impeachment; impeachment with no removal (ala Clinton); impeachment and resignation; straight up resignation (ala Nixon). On the surface, Bill Clinton’s path seems the most likely. As of now, Speaker Pelosi has enough support among her Democratic membership to move forward. But, since there are 47 Democrats in the Senate, even if each one voted for removal, that means 20 Republicans would have to join them.
I’ve had students ask me why even bother with all of this if the result is him still being president. I get the question; I really do. It seems like a lot to do for a possible status quo result. But here’s the thing: I am in favor of using a constitutionally-provided process to keep the most powerful person IN THE WORLD in check. I still believe in the Constitution, and checks and balances, and all that democratic fairy tale shit. The idealist in me has faith in the institutions; the scientist in me, though, knows that partisanship is a helluva drug, and the process of impeachment is political. How do these two things meet, especially when the president at the center of it all is, well, Trump?
And maybe the more important question to address is why we should care if the president abused his power or obstructed justice or is being influenced by foreign governments (all of which the Founding Fathers were terrified of, BTW). I mean, the vast majority of us have little to no faith in elected officials and the government, so why does it surprise us when they funnel campaign money, evade taxes, or sexually harass/assault staffers and colleagues? Haven’t we come to expect our elected officials to win by all means necessary? And especially given all we know about Donald Trump as a business person, TV personality, and presidential candidate, should we be surprised he’s in this impeachment predicament? And yet, all of this aside, the president is not a law unto himself. The president’s staff may serve at his pleasure, but he still serves at the pleasure of the nation.
As a political scientist, this is really fun for me. I am living that full circle moment from that classroom where I sat in 1999 to the one in front of the classroom in 2019. I will add that watching the first female Speaker of the House continually clap back at the Misogynist-in-Chief is pretty fabulous…and also inspired my Halloween costume.
Stay tuned, CTC :)
Author: Suzanne Chod