Perspective is the right word. I said “seem almost quaint”.
Should Reagan have been impeached?
Reagan stated to the country, “Mistakes were made.” Now that’s a pretty weak admission of guilt. The passive voice was noted at the time. But what Reagan was not doing was placing himself above or outside the law, at least after he was caught. To do so would have been a threat to our democracy.
Iran/Contra violated procedure; if congress simply looked the other way it would encourage future administrations to enter pointless wars without congressional approval, presenting them with fait accomplis. Which administrations tend to do anyway. But while it’s serious, it doesn’t strike at the heart of democracy. Patriots could reasonably censure the Reagan administration while opposing impeachment.
Trump’s banana republic shenanigans are stupid, but arming Central American death squads is beyond quaint.
Your post seems to argue that Congress had full rights to remove Reagan, but then you finish by saying, “So they shouldn’t have.” Your conclusion doesn’t seem to follow from your argument. If we remove the “so”, then it’s fine. You’re making a statement, without any backing information. But with the “so”, it is implying that you feel like the previous material had somehow backed your statement, and either I’m failing to see what that is or you had a brain fart and forgot to include it.
One of the most important tenets of our country is that there is nothing higher than the rule of law.
If Congress made a law that the government was not to give money to the Contras, and Reagan ordered the Executive branch to do so anyways, then he was breaking the law and should have been removed.
Really, the only defense would be that the law had a loophole and the Reagan Administration successfully exploited it. I doubt that they did so.
If every president who “deserved” to be impeached were impeached, we’d be at POTUS 100# or 150# by now.
Impeachment should be an exception, not the norm.
In the case of the OP though, it would have been the 25th Amendment, not impeachment.
And they’d behave better if they knew impeachment was a real possibility. Why make the President above the law?
Yes, yes and once you appoint someone CEO or President of a corporation, it should be a for a fixed term, and not at all dependent on his performance.
Totally unfair snark on my part. True, robust institutions have ways of getting rid of incompetent leaders. In other countries, they use votes of no-confidence. We should too. But we don’t. That’s not the way our system is set up. And if we try using the impeachment process for these purposes, we open the door to all manner of mischief, like removing a President from office because he receives oral sex from an intern in a consensual relationship.
So I actually agree with Velocity. But I opine our system of government is antiquated and needs overhaul. Make it resemble other democracies, with party leaders and the like. To the extent that our system worked, it relied upon norms, which the GOP has blasted apart since about 1990.
He wasn’t impeached for that. He was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice. He was also guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice. He shouldn’t have been impeached for that, in my opinion, but let’s get the facts correct.
I was under the impression that VP George Bush was the point person for Iran Contra. I actually don’t think it’s hard to believe that Reagan was really out of the loop (whether intentional or otherwise).
Shouldn’t the question be whether this should have been an investigation that involved the GHW Bush administration that followed Regan?
God no. Just because they send 2nd banana to the meetings in order to allow plausible deniability doesn’t mean you have to play along. Where does the buck stop?