He’s also a raging incompetent. Could such a president be impeached? No “high crimes and misdemeanors”, not even low crimes. 25th amendment? Incompetence isn’t an incapacity. Would we just be stuck with such an individual until the next election or is there something that could be done?
Since this requires speculation, let’s move it to IMHO.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Just throwing Jimmy Carter in the mix.
All questions about impeachment can be answered by saying that all impeachments are political.
If your hypothetical president has an opposition Congress and the support of the public, then sure. If some other of the million possibilities are present, then who knows?
There are a bunch of Presidents who history found to be raging incompetents: Warren Harding, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, fill in your own partisan pick. Johnson was impeached (and damn near convicted) essentially for disagreeing with Congress and being disagreeable about it.
The moral of the story is, if Congress wants to get rid of a president badly enough, they’ll find a reason.
The phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” is often misunderstood. It does not refer to literal crimes. It refers to behaviors which undermine high office. That can include things like incompetence, drunkenness, moral turpitude, abuse of office, and even adultery. It can also overlap with criminal behavior such as bribery, graft, or treason.
Imcompetence absolutely can be construed as a high crime. As friedo points out, “High crimes and misdemeanors” does not mean “a felony or a misdemeanor.” Simply not doing one’s job as a public official is a high crime.
“High crime,” as distinct from, well, a crime, means misconduct that is specifically applicable to a person in public office. That’s what the “high” means. An ordinary schmuck cannot commit a high crime because they have no public trust to betray. The first person ever impeached in the USA for high crimes and misdemeanors was a judge, for being drunk all the time.
There is a fair degree of evidence that the Founding Fathers expected impeachment to be used a lot more than it ended up being used. As you might expect, though, the term is extremely subjective.
The usual line I hear about impeachment is that “Congress could impeach the President because they don’t like his haircut if they felt like it.”
If enough of them want him gone bad enough they can do it for any reason.
Harding may have been incompetant, but there’s no way in hell you could describe him as “squeaky clean”.
Carter wasn’t squeaky clean. He lusted in his heart.
And wasn’t Carter reported to have used the phrase “I’ll whip his ass” once in regards to a physical confrontation with someone? Definately a hoodlum from the wrong side of the peanut farm.
The Congress would be loath to impeach on grounds of general “incompetence”. As per the precedents, they would seek to identify a *specific *incompetent action or pattern of actions that they can argue shows the official should not be in that office.
Moreover, it is generally accepted in our government system that instituting a lawful policy that fails is NOT a political “high crime”. The established punishment for instituting a lawful policy that fails is losing the next election. And failure, or a policy result you do not like, does not automatically entail “incompetence” either, sometimes you just fail. If the market tanks and people lose money, well, it says right there on the paper that’s a risk you take, getting rid of the President ain’t getting it back.
The way the process has evolved the Congress has not used the impeachment process to turn this into a parliamentary system where the HOG and Cabinet serve subject to the confidence of the Legislature – the Johnson impeachment failing to end in removal thwarted an apparent attempt to move in that direction. On top of that, sure, it IS a political process, the congresspeople KNOW that. But they know, in turn, that if they actually make it a precedent that they ***will ***“impeach you for not liking your haircut”, then that weakens the power of that tool, plus it will shortly be a standard turned on themselves. Besides, the Clinton impeachment had the consequence of raising the bar insofar as impeaching when you know there’s no chance of removal and the people don’t care.
That is gross understatement if I ever heard one. Trump is a shining example of competence compared to the Johnson cluster fuck.
That’s a very human characteristic, than rings several bells with me.
My dad worked in an area where “incompetent” was somewhat subjective, like in politics. When the situation arose where someone was actually objectively incompetent (mental breakdown), it was still the case that nobody wanted to be the one to point a finger.
Had Operation Eagle Claw actually gone as planned Carter would probably have either been impeached or forced to resign since the mission as planned would have directly lead to the death or capture of most of the American soldiers involved.
Here’s a nice (if longish) review/recap of Charles Black’s Impeachment: A Handbook (1974). He’s just one scholar, of course, but I quite like his arguments that
- “other high crimes and misdemeanors” shouldn’t reasonably/conscientiously be read as a blank check to Congress (e.g., “we don’t like Trump’s weave – ITMFA!”).
Black argues that the category “HC&M” should be read as fundamentally similar to treason and bribery, thus only including actions that are serious and clearly harmful to the public good, not trivial ones.
2) – but on the other hand “HC&M” must also include executive actions that are not crimes in the usual sense. I quite like these reductios ad absurdum:
Anyway, that’s another vote from me for yes, impeaching a president for extreme incompetence is reasonable and desirable.
And I’ll tack on an n’thing of all the comments that, in practice, determining what’s impeachable relies on the judgement of Congress and the Senate, and all their wise little members, who doubtless when the time comes will do some deep thinking about their constitutional duty and the language, as Black thought they can, and should.
I think that most of us are saying that the OP was so vague as to be meaningless. Of course there’s a vast gulf between what is legally permissible and what is politically allowable, but that difference wasn’t apparent in the question as written.