Impeachment - does it portend nuclear electoral failure?
Thu Jul 05, 2007 at 03:44:38 PM PDT
Hi - the recent talk about impeachment has gotten to me again. Two ideas in particular I want to address, which are common in arguments opposing impeachment. I call them "misperceptions" because I don't think they are correct, yet they influence a lot of people's thinking on the subject, including, apparently, Nancy Pelosi's (whom I have a lot of respect for).
(FYI - I favor impeachment for Bush and the rest. In fact, we had a campaign that led our village board to pass a resolution on it. It was fun.)
And onto the diary ....
The first misperception concerns the nature of impeachment. It is the idea that impeachment is some kind of legal coup d'etat, a wrenching strike at the state. Disruptive to the normal functioning of government, impeachment is popular only among extremists, ideologues, and other unrealistic sorts. This position has a corollary, that if an impeachment does not lead to removal of the president, its advocates will pay a high price. In other words, "if you strike at a king you must kill him" or you get your own head chopped off.
The reference to impeachment as a nuclear political act represents this thinking. And the commonly heard objection that "we don't have the votes in the Senate so let's drop it" represents the related view that anything besides a 2/3 senate vote and removal is a "failure" and worse than no impeachment at all.
I don't buy it, at least not if impeachment is pursued with good intentions, that is, what's best for the country. I believe the framers viewed impeachment as something necessary, something that would happen from time to time without completely disrupting everything. James Madison and others spoke about impeachment as a deterrent to many potential presidential abuses of power, such as firing quality officers for political reasons and use of pardon power to obstruct justice in cases where the president may be involved in a crime. I do not think they would have done so had they thought impeachment would have "nuclear" effects on the U.S. government.
Barbara Jordan, member of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, eloquently addressed the argument that anything short of removal is a failure:
It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution, for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office.
The Constitution doesn't say that. The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of this body, the legislature, against and upon the encroachment of the Executive. In establishing the division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judges the same person.
She would never have agreed with the proposition advanced in many quarters, even apparently from Nancy Pelosi, that one has to line up the votes in the Senate before the House Judiciary Committee goes forward.
There is an element of "the perfect being the enemy of good" in this thinking. Yes, it would be nice to have the votes in the Senate to remove Bush, but it does not follow that, since the votes are likely not there, the House must avoid impeachment altogether. Not at all. On the contrary, any step toward impeachment is overall a positive, since it brings some accountability to the president. Just to have his crimes listed in public is a step forward from where we are now. More people are aware of Clinton's "misdeeds" than would be had the GOP not decided to impeach. That action by the GOP - cynical as it was - led to a lot of public discussion of what is an impeachable offense, whether infidelity matters, etc. Imagine the result of a justifiable impeachment!
The perfectionist thinking leads to the conclusion that Congress should not seriously call Bush to account. That to me is much worse than an inability to gain 2/3 of the Senate. Actually, the term "failed impeachment" is misleading. Since impeachment is only the indictment, it can only fail if it is done poorly. What people mean when they say "failed impeachment" is something else - no conviction. But a successful impeachment - one that is thorough and well-grounded - may well not lead to conviction.
Another positive of the House moving forward with impeachment is that it would mean the House truly saw itself as an independent, co-equal branch of government.
The second misperception I would like to address is the idea that the Republicans paid a huge price at the polls for impeaching Clinton. People holding this view cite the 1998 off-year elections, saying they were abnormal in that the GOP did not make gains. I say the 1998 election results do not support that view.
How big was this GOP loss in 1998? According to Wikipedia, the GOP maintained its 55-45 Senate advantage, while going from 226-208 in the House to 223-211. It was a small loss, but definitely a departure from the pattern.
The pattern the "electoral impeachment punishment advocates" refer to is well-documented. In Truman's last off-year election, the GOP gained 28 House seats. In 1958 (Eisenhower), The Dems gained a whopping 53 House and 16 Senate seats. And in 1986 (Reagan) the Dems gained 5 in the House and 8 in the Senate.
But two differences between these presidents and Clinton explain why the 1998 election went the other way.
Unlike Clinton, all these presidents were less popular toward the end of their terms. Clinton, on the other hand, reached his popularity nadir in time for the first off-year election, in 1994. Here is a plot of Clinton's approval, from Political Arithmetik (approval is on the left axis, and time is on the bottom - each blue vertical bar roughly represents two years):
Not surprisingly, the Democrats go destroyed in 1994. That brings us to the other difference between Clinton and the rest. Under Clinton, the opposition made big gains (which they kept) before the second off-year election. By 1998, the Dems had nowhere to go but up.
I believe it is these two factors - Clinton's rising popularity over the course of his tenure, and the anomalous first-term off-year losses - that made 1998 look like it did in comparison to previous examples. It is not necessary to invoke impeachment to explain it.
Well, that's all for now. Take care, you all, and thanks for reading.
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