By its very nature, Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 65, impeachment “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. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other.”
And: “In such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
Republicans and Democrats can both nod their heads in agreement now — even as each side thinks it’s the other party that’s ignoring the facts out of partisan loyalty.
Yet the fact remains that House Democrats have charged ahead, voting out two articles of impeachment on a purely partisan basis, with all Republicans (and a handful of Democrats) opposed.
And they’ve done so despite the view Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed to The Washington Post just this March: “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country. And [President Trump’s] just not worth it.”
Or, for that matter, the warning Rep. Jerry Nadler issued back in 1998, during Republicans’ drive to impeach President Bill Clinton: “There must never be a narrowly voted impeachment or an impeachment substantially supported by one of our major political parties and largely opposed by the other. Such an impeachment would lack legitimacy, would produce divisiveness and bitterness in our politics for years to come.”
Public opinion, to the extent it has budged at all over the 12 weeks since Pelosi declared an “impeachment inquiry,” has turned against impeachment. That certainly suggests that the evidence Democrats insist is overwhelming isn’t actually persuasive to those whose minds weren’t already made up.
It doesn’t help their case that Democrats in Congress had embraced the #Resistance by Inauguration Day, nor that most House Dems supported impeachment long before the Ukraine affair made a single headline.
Nor that the Russiagate investigation, which top Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff long insisted had found clear evidence of Trump crimes, actually never found much of anything — and indeed looks to have been completely ginned up by Trump’s enemies in the Obama administration with an assist from operatives working for the Hillary Clinton campaign.
Impeachment is a vital power. Hamilton called it “a bridle in the hands of the legislative body upon the executive servants of the government.” Without it, a chief executive gone wrong couldn’t be removed without “the crisis of a national revolution.”
But that’s all the more reason to use it carefully — not this pell-mell rush to get it off the House floor and over to the Senate, which is sure to acquit the president because the House built so shoddy a case.
As law professor Jonathan Turley warned Democrats just two weeks ago, passing frivolous articles of impeachment “is an abuse of power. It’s your abuse of power. You’re doing precisely what you are criticizing the president for doing.”
Yet, with Wednesday night’s votes, the deed is done. Let’s pray the consequences for the Republic won’t be as dire as Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadler once warned.