Is impeachment a word we have heard too many in the past three years? Yes; we have been hearing about impeaching President Trump since before he was even President and the talk just won’t stop. The latest episode is coming courtesy of a whistle blower on President Trump’s phone call with the President of Ukraine in which, the whistle blower claims, the President attempted to use U.S. aid as leverage to push the Ukrainian government to assist him in digging up dirt on one of his political opponents, Joe Biden. I’m not here to push for or against impeachment, but I do want to point out a dangerous problem I am seeing with these impeachment proceedings: The complete, total, and unadulterated politicization of the impeachment process.
Impeachment is supposed to be a very serious Constitutional process that should not be taken lightly. However, when members of the left seem to yell impeachment because the President had five donuts for breakfast, the gravity and importance of such action is lost. We have seen a politicized impeachment in America before. While some might turn towards President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, I want to look at the case of President Andrew Johnson.
Johnson’s impeachment proceedings occurred in 1868 after Johnson decided to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton from office. This was a violation of the ‘Tenure of Office Act’ Congress had passed the previous year which was designed to prohibit the President from removing an official who had been confirmed by the Senate unless he had Senatorial approval. This act was passed over Johnson’s veto and was done to protect cabinet members such as Stanton. When Johnson removed Stanton, the House of Representatives impeached him and sent the case to the Senate to be tried. Two months later, the Senate came one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict. When this was done, it dealt a serious blow to the idea that a President can be impeached because the opposite party doesn’t like him, his policy, or his administrative style. The attempt to impeach Johnson was obviously a political fiasco as the Congress was attempting to curb the President’s ability to choose his own advisors.
In the opinion of this author, it was a vital moment in our nation’s history when the attempt to impeach Johnson failed. That is because when the politically motivated attempt on Johnson failed, impeachment was kept from becoming a never ending weapon used by opposing parties against a duly elected President. Maybe today’s far left can take a lesson from history.
We can check into the Trump phone call and make sure that no impropriety occurred. However, people were (and still are) calling for impeachment over the Russian fiasco a year ago and that has gone nowhere. When those same people start stumbling over each other trying to get to the impeachment door over this phone call, one has to wonder whether this is politically motivated. If these impeachment proceedings are politically motivated, then those leading them do a disservice to the Constitution and their sworn duty as members of Congress to uphold that same Constitution.
The fact of the matter is that Congress has every Constitutional right to impeach a President. Under Article 1, the House of Representatives is given the sole power of impeachment and the Senate is given the sole power to try impeachments. But if there is no CLEAR evidence of wrong-doing, then that should be the end of impeachment talk. When we talk about impeachment, we need to remember that this needs to be a facts-based investigation. IF it is proven Trump did wrong on the call, then I can see people calling for his impeachment. However, if there are only accusations with little or no evidence, then impeachment is nothing more than political hackery and should be stopped. It really isn’t that complicated!
Isaac Hadam is an 18 year old who writes and speaks about the U.S. Constitution. He is the
Vice-President of the Constitutional Awareness Pact, has written for the Conway Daily Sun, and is a contributing writer to the Weirs Times. For more info please visit www.constitutionalawarenesspact.webs.com.
