Our constitutional republic somehow managed to survive the first 80 years of its existence, and to sustain the highly varied leadership of its first 16 presidents, without once enduring a serious effort to impeach any of those early chief executives.
That impeachment-free era didn't arise from a consistent pattern of integrity and competence among all White House occupants. Far from it—Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan, two presidents consistently rated by historians among the most unworthy and disastrous in the whole sweep of our history, presided over the end of this period, contributing significantly to the onset of disunion and civil war.
After that incomparably destructive conflict, and the tragic assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, came another leader of dubious ability and questionable judgment: Andrew Johnson. He earned the distinction of becoming our first impeached president in 1868, at the end of his single tumultuous term.
Johnson escaped conviction and removal by a single vote, and after his baleful example a full century elapsed before Congress made another concerted effort to drive a president from office. Facing all-but-certain impeachment by the House and likely conviction and removal from office by the Senate, Richard Nixon resigned his post in 1974.
In other words, between George Washington's first inauguration in 1789 and Nixon's resignation in 1974, the United States experienced just two impeachment crises. But in the last half century we've gone through four—yes four—paralyzing, polarizing battles to drive controversial figures like Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and now Joe Biden out of the post they had earned with majority votes in the Electoral College. Amazingly, since Nixon's first inauguration (1969), nearly half of our presidents—four out of 10—have been forced to fight back against determined efforts from their partisan rivals to drive them from power through a creaky, against-the-odds impeachment process.
Thoughtful citizens should ponder this peculiar, painful record. Why, in this latter stage of our political history, has America come down with an altogether unprecedented impeachment epidemic?
The fact that each of the accused offenders, going all the way back to Andrew Johnson, has avoided conviction in a Senate trial makes the recent impeachment obsession all the more puzzling and irrational. Why should congressional leaders invest so much time, energy, and credibility to pursue a strategy that promises so little chance of validation or discernible gain?
To give that question contemporary relevance: why are Republican leaders in the House so stubbornly fixated on repeating the mistakes of their frustrated predecessors in a new impeachment crusade that will most likely do more political damage to the impeachers than to the impeached?
There are only two possible outcomes for Kevin McCarthy and his GOP colleagues if they spend the remaining months of Joe Biden's term in a determined effort to expel the incumbent from power. Even in the event that their rigorous investigations of the Biden family produce evidence of corruption so damning that they can persuade 18 Democratic senators to join every Republican in voting to convict and remove President Biden, they will have only succeeded in forcing the installation of President Kamala Harris.
In the election that follows in 2024, Harris would be able to run as the sympathetic incumbent, buoyed by natural sentiment on behalf of an unexpected successor who also happens to be the first female to take charge of the Oval Office. The new president would also enjoy a dramatic age advantage (of nearly 20 years) over her likely opponent (Donald Trump, 78 on election day). Anyone who believes that the newly inaugurated, freshly minted Madame President would somehow prove more vulnerable than her aging, battle-scarred predecessor has indulged in the worst sort of partisan wishful thinking.
And then there's the far more likely result of any determined Republican impeachment assault: that the GOP falls far short of the 67 Senate votes needed for conviction, and Biden manages to stumble through the last few months of the presidential term to which a solid majority of his fellow citizens elected him. It's true that the Democrats impeached Trump the first time in the hope of destroying his chances for reelection, but as with Bill Clinton, polling showed support for the embattled incumbent increasing rather than dissolving in response. Why should the results of a Biden battle to win acquittal at a prospective impeachment trial produce the opposite result?
Any incumbent seeking reelection will emphasize his partisan victories in order to approach the public as a winner. And what partisan victory could look more important or decisive than crushing an ill-considered impeachment effort from the benighted opposition? By joining a battle they are all but sure to lose, the Republicans would hand the Biden administration the easiest, most dramatic, and clear-cut triumph of its tumultuous term.
If Speaker McCarthy and other GOP leaders can somehow avoid this trap, they would do the nation a great favor by leading the United States away from its impeachment epidemic. These bitter, deeply personalized confrontations never benefit the factions most determined to pursue them. They only distract our elected representatives from more important challenges to the nation at large. Those who derive satisfaction from chants of "Lock Him Up!" (or "Lock Her Up"), may feel disappointed, but the republic will benefit from recognition that meaningful political success under our Constitution never requires the total, unequivocal destruction of the other side.
Michael Medved hosts a daily radio talk show and is author, most recently, of God's Hand On America: Divine Providence in the Modern Era. Follow him on Twitter: @MedvedSHOW.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
