There are many books recently published about presidential impeachment – some of a legalistic nature, and some historic. I read Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy, by Washington lawyer David O. Stewart. A very interesting book.
There were, of course, parallels and differences between the Johnson and Trump impeachments, and I thought it was the parallels that were more interesting. In each case, there was a president who was extremely unpopular with the opposing political party, who could be accused of many derelictions of duty. In Johnson’s day, the national trauma was even worse than today – the Civil War had ended, and the questions about how to treat the states of the former Confederacy were many and difficult to resolve.
For example: were the ten southern states always a part of the nation, even though they had seceded, or do they have to be re-entered? what about the constitutions of the former Confederate states, which obviously needed to be rewritten to conform to the laws of the United States….who is to rewrite them, and do they need any approval from the federal government? what about the states’ senators and members of the House….are they automatically members of the nationals bodies, or does the Senate and House reserve the right not to seat certain individuals? and what about those certain individuals who were active Confederates and fought against this country? and finally (although there are more, I am sure), how do you deal with the collapse of the 3/5 a person rule, which in effect increased the population of the southern states for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives, giving the former Confederate states more power after the war than they had before.
Similar to the Trump trial, the trial managers for the Johnson trial concentrated on one issue (out of untold matters they could have focused on) – in the Johnson trial, this meant the firing by the president of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton before the Senate confirmed a successor in accordance with the recently passed Tenure of Office Act. From the one event, the House fashioned eleven counts for impeachment. Other actions of the president, which were equally or in some cases even more controversial were not part of the impeachment.
In the case of Trump, we have a divided Congress, with the Senate (the voting body) controlled by the president’s party. In the Johnson case, not so. Both Houses were overwhelmingly controlled by the Republican Party (Johnson was a Democrat – the Lincoln/Johnson ticket was a unity ticket – meant to unite the country during the war). The House of Representatives was 77% Republican – the vote needed to convict Johnson was, of course, only 66 2/3 of the House, or 36 votes; a party line vote would have resulted in conviction, and virtually all assumed that this is how the trial would end. But, because of Republican defections, it did not end this way. The final vote was 35-19 (the southern states were not represented), one vote short.
Why did the impeachment fail? Was it because of fear of precedent? Was it because there was ambiguity in the general interpretation of the one year old Tenure Act? Was it because some were bribed, either by money or political promises? We will never know for sure.
Were there witnesses in the Johnson impeachment? There were 41 witnesses. Did the impeachment trial take up a lot of time? Of course.
This year, Republican Senators are complaining that the hearings are boring. Well, maybe, if you have to sit there all day and try to listen. The Johnson trial was longer (as was the Clinton trial). And, as former Senator Toricelli said on MSNBC this morning: Imagine how boring it was to sit all summer in an unairconditioned building in Philadelphia while the details of the American constitution was being drafted.
Arthur Thinks (He Thinks) 