1 Boring Old Man

As long as I’m on a legal kick, what are the grounds for impeachment of a president? There are only two previous examples where impeachment has played out – Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. In both cases, the presidents were impeached by the House of Representatives, but acquitted in the Senate trial. Articles of impeacheachment were drawn up for Richard Nixon, but he resigned in the following weeks and the impeachment proceedings were terminated.

The Constitution covers impeachment in Article ll, Section 4:

The President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

The Andrew Johnson case seems, in retrospect, to have been politically motivated and isn’t considered much of a precedent, though Johnson escaped conviction by only one vote in the Senate. The Clinton case is likewise difficult to draw much of a conclusion from. He definitely lied under oath, but the sin was not one that had much to do with government. It had to do with his sexual escapades with a young intern. Crime, yes. Lying? yes. High Crime? It depends on your politics I’m afraid. It’s too close at hand for the judgement of detached historians.

Nixon’s case was clearer. By the time it came to the articles of impeachment, he and his cohorts had so multiplied their original sins that very few people doubted his guilt. I expect that there were people who would have been glad for Nixon to stay around, but not many who would argue that he had committed no ‘high’ crimes.

Treason is spelled out in detail. Convictions for treason had been so abused in the English courts that the framers of the Constitution specifically defined this [and only this] crime narrowly in Article lll, Section 3:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

So it comes down to the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors. Here’s the summary statement in Nixon’s case:

In all of this, Richard M. Nixon has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as president and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice, and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.

That’s probably as good a statement of grounds for impeachment as any.

Right now, there would be a bitter, devisive argument as to whether George Bush is impeachable. Many of us would argue that he and his Administration have consistently ignored the laws of the land. We would say that they lied about the Intelligence about Iraq in order to foment a needless and destructive war – that they betrayed our time honored way of living among other nations, and lied to do it. We would say that they ignored our pacts with the United Nations and our commitment to the Geneva Conventions. We would point to the deliberate outing of a C.I.A. Agent, to the unlawful surveillance of American citizens, to the unlawful and shameful surveillance of the U.N. Security Council members. We would point to countless lies in public speeches. We would say that George Bush and Richard Cheney have trumped Richard Nixon’s articles in spades.

I’ll not try to do the other side. I’d be unable to do it without being unfairly sarcastic. But we’ve all  heard the Spin and Talking Points enough to know the gist of it. I suppose what it will come down to is similar to the Nixon case – Congressional Investigations that make the facts known; Special Prosecutors with enough power to unearth the things that are not yet known. The question at this point is do we have the energy and the will to go through it all. This time, it will be different from Watergate. True enough, the Viet Nam War was on trial then, but the focus was on something that was internal to this country. In this case, we will be in the situation of indicting ourselves for a ‘high Crime’ against the world.

And we are guilty. Are we brave enough to face the music and clean up our own side of the street, even though the way it started was with a vicious attack on this country? It has the possibility of being our finest hour, or our worst. I doubt we can avoid it, but I’m sure we shouldn’t try. The current partisan divide in the country makes impeachment seem nearly impossible, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are clear grounds – and the law is the law. It is a part of the problem that the Administration has created such extreme devisiveness as part of their way of doing things. It will be an enormous task to reconstitute the maxim ‘United we stand. Divided we fall.’