The public seems to think something should be done to the President, maybe censure but not impeachement. Punish him but don't remove him from office. They don't understand that impeachment is exactly what they want:
WSJ this morning:
How to Censure Clinton:
Impeach Him
By Gary L. McDowell, a director of the Institute of United States Studies at the University of London.
Those who framed and ratified the Constitution understood what impeachment entailed. The prosecution of such an inquest, Alexander Hamilton wrote, "will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties, more or less friendly or inimical, to the accused." But if the founders understood what impeachment would mean for us, it seems that most of us do not understand what it meant to them.
For all that has been written in recent months about impeachment, there remains the misperception that impeachment automatically means removal from office. But what is commonly called "impeachment" is in fact two distinct constitutional processes. Only the first of them -- the finding of credible evidence by the House of Representatives that an official has committed impeachable offenses -- is properly called impeachment.
An article of impeachment passed by the House is the political equivalent of an indictment in a criminal process. It is not a final judgment of guilt but a formal accusation of wrongdoing. Like an indictment, an article of impeachment is presented to the "court" established to try cases of impeachment, the Senate, indicating that there is sufficient evidence of impeachable offenses to justify a formal trial on the merits of the accusations. Like a criminal court, the Senate may either acquit or convict based on the evidence before it. And the Constitution demands removal from office only upon conviction.
The failure to understand the two-part process of impeachment is what lies behind public opinion creeping toward the parliamentary move to censure the president. But while each house of Congress is empowered by the Constitution to "punish its members for disorderly behavior," there is no similar censorious discretion in dealing with presidential wrongdoing. Impeachment is the only means available to Congress whereby it may legitimately transcend the wall of separation between the legislative and executive branches in order to deal with a president's violation of the law. Censure, as Andrew Jackson said of the Senate's vote to punish him, is "wholly unauthorized by the Constitution and in derogation of its entire spirit."
The best guide for the House as it debates Clinton's fate is the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson in 1868. Though faced with 11 articles of impeachment, Johnson escaped conviction by a single vote in the Senate. This victory was only made possible by seven Republican senators who refused to follow their more radical party leaders and convict. Given the present division of public opinion, it is more than likely that, if impeached, Mr. Clinton would escape conviction by a much wider margin.
This point should not be missed by the public. Impeachment is the only constitutionally feasible way in which the public's wish to see the president meaningfully punished can be reconciled with its desire that he not be driven from office. Unlike censure, impeachment, even without conviction, would record in clear and constitutional terms the gravity of the president's wrongdoing; in the language of the founding fathers, it would be an "indelible reproach." It could not be shrugged off as a mere slap on the wrist.
The calculations of any Congress considering the impeachment of a president must be complex because the political consequences are so grave. Yet there is simply no doubt that if the crimes of perjury, witness tampering and obstruction of justice had been linked to anyone other than a sitting president, that person would now be under indictment if not actually in prison. Given that fact, the House should conclude that impeachment in this case is not just a constitutionally legitimate but a politically necessary way to express its disapproval of the president's actions. Whether such wrongs demand removal is up to the Senate.
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