But it wasn’t a criiiiiiiime! The accused said so, and we have to honor his authority to deciderer what the law is!
The Republicans have moral values. So did Joe Stalin.
At least Stalin had a mustache so everyone knew he was evil. The Republicans hide theirs!
-Joe
It wasn’t… although in rereading the first page and a half, I’ll admit that the problem may have been more me than you, so to the extent necessary, I apologize for my obtuseness.
Anyway, now that we’re on the same page of the argument, so to speak, I think there’s no definitive answer. We simply disagree on the circumstances under which impeachment should happen. You’re saying we should consider impeachment when we think the President’s done things that aren’t necessarily criminal, but nonetheless rise to some very high level of perceived wrongness; a subjective standard instead of an objective one.
My opinion is that’s a dangerous rationale to accept, because it lets political enmity gain even more ground in impeachment questions. Even insisting on my standard, the three impeachments we’ve had (accepting that Nixon’s all-but-the-vote impeachment would have gone forward but for his resignation) are two-thirds tainted by heavy political posturing. As the Supreme Court would later rule, the Tenure in Office Act was unconstitutional, and Clinton’s perjury, while criminal, was the product of a partisan witch-hunt. Only Nixon’s crimes can fairly be characterized as legitimate “freestanding” criminal acts.
To accept that an impeachment can proceed even without that slim bulwark is a bad idea.
But I certainly accept that reasonable people may disagree.
I think that’s certainly the case, and this is certainly the sort of divergence of view where there’s no splitting the difference: either one believes commission of a statutory crime should be a prerequisite for impeachment, or not.
But to summarize my rationale:
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I don’t know if the ‘high crimes’ language of the Constitution had any prior history, but to me it certainly suggests ‘crimes unique to high office.’ If the Founders had meant ‘felonies,’ they could have said so.
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There are always going to be far more ways to abuse Presidential power than Congress can think of to put in the statute books. And restraining such abuses inevitably depends less on statute than on Congress’ willingness to contest illegitimate uses of Presidential power.
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The Consititution is an excellent benchmark, with or without specific statutes to give it further definition.
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I think the voting public’s perfectly capable of making up its minds as to what a ‘high crime’ looks like. (Nixon, yes; Clinton, no; as evidenced by polling at the time. Clinton’s approval ratings actually went up as the GOP impeached him.)
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I don’t think the ‘commission of a crime’ standard is much protection against the sorts of abuses you’re worried about. (Consider the Clinton impeachment.)
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To actually remove a President from office requires a 2/3 Senate majority, which will require not just one party, but a decent minority of the other as well, to sign on to the legitimacy of impeachment, as was happening in the case of Nixon.
Sure, it’s a subjective standard. But ultimately, my faith is in a healthy democracy, more than in detailed rules. Rules without anyone insisting they be followed, are like a city wall without defenders. They’ll hold on their own for a little while, but not indefinitely.
The Founding Fuckups really intended that a scoundrel should remain inviolate, so long as he can skirt the technicalities of the law successfully?
It does have a history. It was first used in the impeachment of the Earl of Suffolk in 1388, and was used to remove or sanction individuals who committed crimes but were protected by the King from ordinary criminal prosecution.
The first proposed language for the Constitution was removal for ‘‘Treason or Bribery or Corruption.’’ The committee reduced that phrase to ‘‘Treason, or bribery.’’ George Mason objected to this limitation, for the reason you mention – he said the term did not reach all the conduct which could and should be grounds for Presidential removal. He suggested the addition of ‘‘or maladministration’’ following the word ‘‘bribery’’ – pretty much what you’re suggesting our interpretation should be. But James Madison shot the idea down, saying that ‘’…[s]o vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate." To address the objection that other conduct needed to be included, the phrase ‘’…other high crimes and misdemeanors,’’ adopted from English law, was added.
Some did, like Madison. Some, like Mason, did not, and wanted more general language permitting the removal of a President for “maladministration.”
Madison’s view won out.
“Maladministration” would be far too wide a term - every President would be guilty of it at one time or another. Ike would have been tossed on those grounds because of Sherman Adams, for instance.
Besides, it’s not even the right direction, AFAIAC - maybe occasionally what one might call disastrous or tragic maladministration (e.g. Iraq, New Orleans) might be a desirable reason to evict the occupant of the White House, but even in such cases I’d certainly expect an element of subverting the Constitution or our democracy to be part of the mix.
It’s unclear to me from your description what Madison really meant, other than maladministration being too low a bar, because of the absence of a sovereign under the Constitution. But “high crimes” in the natural sense of the term perfectly captures my idea of what’s impeachable. It’s got to be big, it’s got to be wrong, and it’s got to flow from the President’s (mis)use of the powers of his office.
So the president violating the law is ok as long as it is not a major one? I understand.
Ummmm . . . what law has President Bush violated? I don’t mean people in his administration but himself personally violated? Did he personally torture prisoners instead of going to Crawford one weekend?
Excluded middle: there’s a lot of room between ‘ok’ and ‘impeachable.’
I’ve just given my spiel on how impeachment should, IMHO, be about ‘high crimes’ - big fucking stuff. Something can be very not-OK (e.g. letting New Orleans drown) without being impeachable, although I go back and forth about that particular case.
Much, much worse than lying under oath about a blowjob. But not necessarily impeachable.
By that standard, every Mafia capo who ever ordered a subordinate to bump off a foe is off the hook.