Intriguing perspective! It sounds like the House GOP is trying to hold President Biden accountable for alleged corruption in his past dealings with Ukraine. While there may be some legitimacy to their concerns, as you noted, it seems unlikely that they’ll push for impeachment given the political reality.
Intriguing perspective! It sounds like the House GOP is trying to hold President Biden accountable for alleged corruption in his past dealings with Ukraine. While there may be some legitimacy to their concerns, as you noted, it seems unlikely that they’ll push for impeachment given the political reality.
This situation raises interesting questions about the effectiveness of impeachment as a tool for holding politicians accountable. On one hand, it seems like a useful method to address misconduct and protect the integrity of your democracy. On the other, when wielded purely for political gain or when facing an uphill battle in the Senate, it could lose its teeth.
These were questions that were raised by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers written to garner support for ratifying the Constitution in 1787 and 1788.
I highly recommend to you Federalist 66, in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the suitability of the Senate as a Court of Impeachments. He tackles several of the points you raise.
At the risk of engaging in shameless self promotion, I will also say that there aspects of this that I touched on last winter in discussing Jack Smith's serial persecutions of Donald Trump. It has always been my view that Donald Trump should have been subjected to an impeachment process first for all the charges Smith has brought against him, and only upon an impeachment conviction should there have been a criminal proceeding in order to apply the appropriate criminal sanction.
One of the challenges we face particularly in holding members of the executive to account is that "misconduct" is all too easily politically construed. We only have to look at the lawfare monstrosities arrayed against Donald Trump to see the truth of this.
As a matter of broad governing philosophy and policy, therefore, my argument is that where there is "scandalous conduct"--which may or may not qualify as actual misconduct when the letter of the law is applied--the impeachment process serves as a means of addressing the political dimensions of accountability first. Once the political aspects are resolved, which would in all cases be true with a conviction upon impeachment, the criminal and/or civil aspects of exacting accountability for that "scandalou conduct" become fairly straightforward. Charges of lawfare are permanently taken off the table if impeachment is considered the first step of accountability.
And as a political matter, if the conduct is not so scandalous as to secure a conviction upon impeachment, we are probably better served not dragging members of the executive into a courtroom to pillory them for their misdeeds. If politics cannot be overcome at impeachment, as a practical matter a fair trial is almost sure to be impossible. This was the reasoning that led Gerald Ford to issue his infamous pardon of Richard Nixon, and in that circumstance, it was probably the right thing to do. As Nixon was not going to be impeached, given that he had resigned, the political elements could not be seperately adjudicated, and thus a fair criminal proceeding could not happen.
Of course, the alternative scenario would have been to impeach Nixon anyway. And there are those who argue that Nixon could have survived impeachment, that the "smoking gun" tape wherein he presumably admitted to obstructing the investigation of Watergate, was in fact no smoking gun at all.
We will never now how that might have turned out, as the decision was reached by Nixon and by the Congress that he would resign and not be impeached.
Holding members of the executive accountable is always an exercise fraught with politics. Impeachment is not a perfect solution, but I have yet to encounter an argument or proposal superior to Hamilton's defense of it in Federalist 66.
Intriguing perspective! It sounds like the House GOP is trying to hold President Biden accountable for alleged corruption in his past dealings with Ukraine. While there may be some legitimacy to their concerns, as you noted, it seems unlikely that they’ll push for impeachment given the political reality.
This situation raises interesting questions about the effectiveness of impeachment as a tool for holding politicians accountable. On one hand, it seems like a useful method to address misconduct and protect the integrity of your democracy. On the other, when wielded purely for political gain or when facing an uphill battle in the Senate, it could lose its teeth.
These were questions that were raised by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers written to garner support for ratifying the Constitution in 1787 and 1788.
I highly recommend to you Federalist 66, in which Alexander Hamilton discusses the suitability of the Senate as a Court of Impeachments. He tackles several of the points you raise.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed66.asp
At the risk of engaging in shameless self promotion, I will also say that there aspects of this that I touched on last winter in discussing Jack Smith's serial persecutions of Donald Trump. It has always been my view that Donald Trump should have been subjected to an impeachment process first for all the charges Smith has brought against him, and only upon an impeachment conviction should there have been a criminal proceeding in order to apply the appropriate criminal sanction.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/trump-should-have-been-impeached
One of the challenges we face particularly in holding members of the executive to account is that "misconduct" is all too easily politically construed. We only have to look at the lawfare monstrosities arrayed against Donald Trump to see the truth of this.
As a matter of broad governing philosophy and policy, therefore, my argument is that where there is "scandalous conduct"--which may or may not qualify as actual misconduct when the letter of the law is applied--the impeachment process serves as a means of addressing the political dimensions of accountability first. Once the political aspects are resolved, which would in all cases be true with a conviction upon impeachment, the criminal and/or civil aspects of exacting accountability for that "scandalou conduct" become fairly straightforward. Charges of lawfare are permanently taken off the table if impeachment is considered the first step of accountability.
And as a political matter, if the conduct is not so scandalous as to secure a conviction upon impeachment, we are probably better served not dragging members of the executive into a courtroom to pillory them for their misdeeds. If politics cannot be overcome at impeachment, as a practical matter a fair trial is almost sure to be impossible. This was the reasoning that led Gerald Ford to issue his infamous pardon of Richard Nixon, and in that circumstance, it was probably the right thing to do. As Nixon was not going to be impeached, given that he had resigned, the political elements could not be seperately adjudicated, and thus a fair criminal proceeding could not happen.
Of course, the alternative scenario would have been to impeach Nixon anyway. And there are those who argue that Nixon could have survived impeachment, that the "smoking gun" tape wherein he presumably admitted to obstructing the investigation of Watergate, was in fact no smoking gun at all.
We will never now how that might have turned out, as the decision was reached by Nixon and by the Congress that he would resign and not be impeached.
Holding members of the executive accountable is always an exercise fraught with politics. Impeachment is not a perfect solution, but I have yet to encounter an argument or proposal superior to Hamilton's defense of it in Federalist 66.