After posting the link twice, I note that no one — in over 200 messages - has seen it appropriate to take up the discussion of what constitutes an impeachable offense as originally envisioned by the Framers.
As well explained in the article, and the following quotations, the Framers were wedded to the notion of checks and balances. While not mentioned herein, the Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitutional Convention and whose failure was the impetus for it, were the foundation for the argument for a strong executive branch and Federal government. Yet, the Framers were still concerned with the aggregation of and abuse of power by the President. Therefore the impeachment clause was one of the measures put into place to, in part, act as a check upon the unlawful abuse of the power vested in the Executive.
Also, the final power to remove a President was vested with the Senate. The Senate, not directly elected, was deemed to be less susceptible to the political ebb and flow of the moment and therefore more likely to reflect properly on the seriousness of the underlying charge and whether said charge constituted a significant enough violation to overturn a free election.
The fact that only 3 times in our nation's history, has the House of Representatives instituted an impeachment inquiry indicates that notwithstanding the bitterness of debate between opposing factions, even starting the process frivolously could seriously undermine the effectiveness of the checks and balances instituted.
In a historical context, the depth of antipathy towards Bill Clinton is not unusual when compared with the allegations of lawlessness, drunkenness, incompetence, immoral behavior, etc by opposing parties to past Presidents. But that is not the stuff , nor has it been of Impeachment. Our past legislators seemed to understand the distinction well.
Rather than discussing whether BC did or did not fondle Lewinsky and whether that is perjury, I would hope that someone would take up the larger question of whether this proceeding, if successful, could seriously damage the our constitutional system, a system which has worked so well.
...But they disagreed about the precise extent of presidential power and, in particular, about how, if at all, the president might be removed from office. If we judge by James Madison's characteristically detailed accounts of the debates, this question troubled and divided the members of the Constitutional Convention.
The initial draft of the Constitution took the form of resolutions presented before the 30-odd members on June 13. One read that the president could be impeached for "malpractice, or neglect of duty," and, on July 20, this provision provoked extensive debate. The notes of Madison, who was representing Virginia, show that three distinct positions dominated the day's discussion. One extreme view, represented by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, was that "the National Legislature should have the power to remove the Executive at pleasure." Charles Pinckney of South Carolina, Rufus King of Massachusetts and Gouvernor Morris of Pennsylvania opposed, with Pinckney arguing that the president "ought not to be impeachable whilst in office." The third position, which ultimately carried the day, was that the president should be impeachable, but only for a narrow category of abuses of the public trust.
It was George Mason of Virginia who took a lead role in promoting this more moderate course. He argued that it would be necessary to counter the risk that the president might obtain his office by corrupting his electors. "Shall that man be above" justice, he asked, "who can commit the most extensive injustice?" The possibility of the new president becoming a near-monarch led the key votes--above all, Morris--to agree that impeachment might be permitted for (in Morris's words) "corruption & some few other offences." Madison concurred, and Edmund Randolph of Virginia captured the emerging consensus, favoring impeachment on the grounds that the executive "will have great opportunitys of abusing his power; particularly in time of war when the military force, and in some respects the public money, will be in his hands." The clear trend of the discussion was toward allowing a narrow impeachment power by which the president could be removed only for gross abuses of public authority.
To Pinckney's continued protest that the separation of powers should be paramount, Morris argued that "no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay without being able to guard against it by displacing him." At the same time, Morris insisted, "we should take care to provide some mode that will not make him dependent on the Legislature." Thus, led by Morris, the framers moved toward a position that would maintain the separation between president and Congress, but permit the president to be removed in extreme situations.
A fresh draft of the Constitution's impeachment clause, which emerged two weeks later on Aug. 6, permitted the president to be impeached, but only for treason, bribery and corruption (exemplified by the president's securing his office by unlawful means). With little additional debate, this provision was narrowed on Sept. 4 to "treason and bribery." But a short time later, the delegates took up the impeachment clause anew. Mason complained that the provision was too narrow, that "maladministration" should be added, so as to include "attempts to subvert the Constitution" that would not count as treason or bribery.
But Madison, the convention's most careful lawyer, insisted that the term "maladministration" was "so vague" that it would "be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate," which is exactly what the framers were attempting to avoid. Hence, Mason withdrew "maladministration" and added the new terms "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors against the State"--later unanimously changed to, according to Madison, "against the United States" to "remove ambiguity." The phrase itself was taken from English law, where it referred to a category of distinctly political offenses against the state.
There is a further wrinkle in the clause's history. On Sept. 10, the entire Constitution was referred to the Committee on Style and Arrangement. When that committee's version appeared two days later, the words "against the United States" had been dropped, probably on the theory that they were redundant, although we have no direct evidence. It would be astonishing if this change were intended to have a substantive effect, for the committee had no authority to change the meaning of any provision, let alone the impeachment clause on which the framers had converged. The Constitution as a whole, including the impeachment provision, was signed by the delegates and offered to the nation on Sept. 17.
These debates support a narrow understanding of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," founded on the central notions of bribery and treason. The early history tends in the same direction. The Virginia and Delaware constitutions, providing a background for the founders' work, generally allowed impeachment for acts "by which the safety of the State may be endangered." And consider the words of the highly respected (and later Supreme Court Justice) James Iredell, speaking in the North Carolina ratifying convention: "I suppose the only instances, in which the President would be liable to impeachment, would be where he had received a bribe, or had acted from some corrupt motive or other." By way of explanation, Iredell referred to a situation in which "the President has received a bribe . . . from a foreign power, and, under the influence of that bribe, had address enough with the Senate, by artifices and misrepresentations, to seduce their consent to a pernicious treaty."
James Wilson, a convention delegate from Pennsylvania, wrote similarly in his 1791 "Lectures on Law": "In the United States and in Pennsylvania, impeachments are confined to political characters, to political crimes and misdemeanors, and to political punishments." Another early commentator went so far as to say that "the legitimate causes of impeachment . . . can have reference only to public character, and official duty . . . . In general, those offenses, which may be committed equally by a private person, as a public officer, are not the subjects of impeachment."...
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