You might as well get used to it. The norm here is to call the president names and make unsubstantiated claims about his character. Talking about issues is secondary.
Be ready, you (and me now) are about to come under serious attack.
I have been talking to you for years C4K, and have never thought of you as a liberal. I have you pictured as basically someone who supports the Constitution with a libertarian tilt maybe. You also view things in a wider perspective than most Americans because you live overseas.
Now, the issue of "high crimes and misdemeanors" should not be based on what we think of Obama. I did not vote for him either time, and only 36% of the population in my state did. So really, this is not a Obamacare issue, or a wealth redistribution issue, but what the intent of the Framers was. Here is a partial excerpt from the Constitutional Rights Foundation that I found interesting.
" The convention adopted “high crimes and misdemeanors” with little discussion. Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors” as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,” granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.
After the Constitutional Convention, the Constitution had to be ratified by the states. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay wrote a series of essays, known as the Federalist Papers, urging support of the Constitution. In Federalist No. 65, Hamilton explained impeachment. He defined impeachable offenses as “those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.”
For the more than 200 years since the Constitution was adopted, Congress has seriously considered impeachment only 18 times. Thirteen of these cases involved federal judges. The “high crimes and misdemeanors” that the House charged against these judges included being habitually drunk, showing favoritism on the bench, using judicial power unlawfully, using the office for financial gain, unlawfully punishing people for contempt of court, submitting false expense accounts, getting special deals from parties appearing before the court, bullying people in open court, filing false income tax returns, making false statements while under oath, and disclosing confidential information.
Only three of the 18 impeachment cases have involved a president — Andrew Johnson in 1868, Richard Nixon in 1974, and Bill Clinton in 1998. It’s important to take a brief look at these three cases to understand how Congress has interpreted “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Andrew Johnson
Andrew Johnson was the only senator from a Southern state who stayed loyal to the union during the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln, seeking to reconcile with the South, tapped Johnson, a Democrat, as his vice-presidential running mate in 1864. When Lincoln was assassinated at the war’s end in 1865, Johnson assumed the presidency. He immediately ran into trouble with the Republican-dominated Congress over Reconstruction of the South. The Radical Republicans supported military rule in the South and voting rights and redistribution of land for blacks. Johnson disagreed and favored a quick return to civilian rule. The two sides grew increasingly farther apart as Congress repeatedly passed Reconstruction legislation, Johnson vetoed it, and Congress overrode his veto. Over Johnson’s veto, Congress passed a Tenure of Office Act, which required Johnson to get permission from Congress before firing any member of the executive branch who had been approved by Congress. Johnson responded by firing the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, a Radical Republican. His firing violated the Tenure of Office Act. But Johnson believed the act was unconstitutional. The House passed 11 articles of impeachment. Eight involved Johnson’s violations of the Tenure of Office Act. One charged him with sending orders through improper channels. Another accused him of conspiring against Congress, citing a statement he made about Congress not representing all the states. The last summarized the other 10 charges and charged him with failing to enforce the Reconstruction Acts. At the end of the Senate trial, only three charges were brought to a vote. Johnson was saved from conviction on each by one vote.
History has not judged well those who brought the charges against Johnson. The charges are generally seen as politically motivated, based on the extreme disagreement over Reconstruction between Congress and the president. They are not viewed as “high crimes and misdemeanors” worthy of removing a president from office. Most commentators look on this impeachment as a severe threat to the separation of powers.
Richard Nixon
The next presidential impeachment case did not arise for more than 100 years. Before taking a look at the Nixon impeachment case, it’s worth examining a famous comment made a few years before (in 1970) by then-Congressman Gerald Ford, who would later succeed Richard Nixon as president. For years, Ford had urged the House to impeach a liberal justice on the Supreme Court. Although Ford’s attempts failed, he uttered memorable words about “high crimes and misdemeanors.” He stated that “an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.” Ford argued that “there are few fixed principles among the handful of precedents.” In one sense, Ford is right. If the House votes articles of impeachment, the vote cannot be challenged in court. The Constitution gives the House sole authority over impeachment. So if the House votes articles of impeachment for any reason, the official is impeached and must stand trial in the Senate. But in another sense, Ford is clearly wrong. The framers of the Constitution did not give Congress absolute power to remove judges and executive officials. It wanted Congress to use its impeachment power only in extreme circumstances, when an official had committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” The separation of powers depends on Congress limiting impeachments to these cases.
In 1972, Richard Nixon won a landslide reelection to a second term as president. During the election, burglars, with links to the White House, had been caught breaking into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The burglary drew little press attention at the time. But it would lead to events that ultimately brought down the president. Nixon may or may not have had advance knowledge of the burglary. He probably feared, however, that its investigation might uncover evidence of political spying and the illegal use of campaign funds on the part of his administration. So he took an active role in obstructing the investigation. He discussed raising hush money for the burglars and enlisted the FBI and CIA in squelching the investigation. In 1974, the House Judiciary committee voted three articles of impeachment. One accused Nixon of obstruction of justice. Another accused him of abuse of power. The third charged him with contempt of Congress for defying the committee’s requests to produce documents. Nixon resigned the presidency before the whole House voted on the articles.
The committee had declined to vote an article of impeachment against Nixon for tax evasion. The committee did not believe this was an impeachable offense. It based its conclusion on a staff report, “Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” which the committee had ordered prepared before beginning its investigation. This report traced the history, precedents, and grounds for impeachment. The report concluded:
Not all presidential misconduct is sufficient to constitute grounds for impeachment. . . . Because impeachment of a President is a grave step for the nation, it is predicated only upon conduct seriously incompatible with either the constitutional form and principles of our government or the proper performance of constitutional duties of the presidential office.
The same year Yale Law School professor Charles L. Black published a highly influential book, Impeachment: A Handbook. Black agreed that impeachment is a grave step that should be taken most cautiously. Impeaching a president overturns an election. Black’s research led him to the conclusion that a president should be impeached only for “serious assaults on the integrity of the processes of government,” or for “such crimes as would so stain a president as to make his continuance in office dangerous to public order.”
Black’s book cited two examples of presidential misconduct that would not merit impeachment: (1) a president brings a female minor across a state line for “immoral purposes” in violation of federal law and (2) a president obstructs justice by helping hide marijuana for a White House intern. Black considered it “preposterous” to impeach a president for these acts. These examples would prove relevant to President Clinton’s impeachment case more than 20 years later.
