Is a President Allowed to Run Again After Being Impeached

Alarm, a major set on of the history nerd is coming:

Beingness smart MinnPost readers, I'm guessing that well-nigh of you could answer the trivia question: Who were the only 2 presidents to exist impeached? Respond: Andrew Johnson, who served out Lincoln's 2nd term later the assassination, and Pecker Clinton. Nope, can't count Richard Nixon on a technicality. He resigned before the House could vote up the articles of impeachment.

And y'all probably know that, although in mutual parlance impeachment is often used to refer to the removal a president from role, in fact the impeachment is only the first step — equivalent to an indictment — which triggers a trial in the Senate. No president has ever been impeached, convicted and removed.

And chances are, you think what Bill Clinton did to get impeached, and then we won't talk nearly that in front of the children. Only unless you lot are a serious history nerd, I suspect that you can't — without benefit of the Google — recall what Andrew Johnson did to get impeached (and to come up much closer — within 1 vote really — to existence convicted and removed from role).

J.C. Buttre

Andrew Johnson

So I'll tell you the trivia: Andrew Johnson was impeached because he fired a disloyal fellow member of his cabinet (disloyal in the sense that he was refusing to carry out the president's policies and was actively conspiring with the congressional bulk confronting the president).

This level of disloyalty, I would posit, is not a terrible reason for firing a guy. And I would postulate (having already posited) that such a firing would exist a pretty poor excuse for the kind of high criminal offense and misdemeanor required by the Constitution for the impeachment and removal of a president. Feel free to differ.

I tin can (and programme to) explicate a bit further. But first I suppose you are entitled to some clue every bit to why we might want to think about this ancient history in the twelvemonth 2011 (other than that it is an heady and interesting affiliate of U.South. history and every twelvemonth is a skillful year to learn almost those, eh?). Just one of the norms (which I hate) of the news business is that in order to write about anything that happened longer than 24 hours agone, you have to have some way to necktie it to what'southward happenin' at present.

So here'due south what's happenin' now
Our national government is currently performing poorly (understatement) in the category of cooperation between parties and across branches. Republicans in the Senate accept recently made unprecedentedly frequent apply of the filibuster (a tool, by the manner, which is not provided past the Constitution) to preclude legislation from coming to a vote.

Democrats (in Congress and the White Business firm) ginned up a very tricky and edgy but technically legal use of the "reconciliation" maneuver to sneak final passage of the big health intendance beak past the Republican delay. Nigh bills involving taxing or spending (or, God help us, the debt ceiling) take been a cause for full partisan warfare leading to brinksmanship, a near-default and a downgrading of the U.S. government's credit rating.

Considering of the inability of Democrats and Republicans to agree on a plan to do something that both parties favor (reducing the projected future deficit), the Congress devised a bizarre self-threat to make spending cuts that both parties will dislike unless a Supercommittee can come with a package of cuts that both parties similar improve.

President Obama has essentially declared that nothing he considers a effective footstep to deal with the nation'south severe economic problems tin exist accomplished if it has to go through Congress, so he has but recently launched a series of small policies (the change in payback requirements for higher loans, for example) that he has patently discovered he tin can practice past executive order. (Manifestly this is inside the reach of such presidential powers, although I retrieve I would concord with Congressman John Kline that this is not the way such things are supposed to get done. )

And speaking of both impeachment and cantankerous-branch ability struggles: Although it hasn't gotten much attention, Newt Gingrich has used his campaign for president to suggest that the federal judiciary could be made to run across reason if a few federal judges (those that Gingrich believes have misinterpreted the Constitution) were impeached or perhaps informed that Congress retains the power to exercise abroad with unabridged courts. (Jefferson did it, Gingrich says.) And so there was Rick Perry'due south suggestion that secession isn't really out of the question in the 21^st century.

The American system of regime is far far far from perfect and I can retrieve of several structural reforms that I would support. The framers' arrangement has held upward remarkably well for two and a half centuries, all things considered. But in the absence of cooperation and compromise across party and branch lines, weird, ugly things kickoff to happen as hyperpartisans start to scour the rulebook for tricks they tin pull that bend simply don't quite pause the rules.

High crimes and misdemeanors
There's only been i consummate breakdown, in 1861, when Abe Lincoln'due south ballot (on a platform that said that the federal government had no power to abolish slavery in any of the then-existing states) caused eleven states to secede from the union. Only one senator from i of those states (Sen. Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, himself a slaveholder) declared his loyalty to the marriage, stayed in the Senate and was afterwards appointed by Lincoln equally military governor of Tennessee.

The war lasted so long that Lincoln came up for reelection before it was over. Information technology'south a little remembered fact that Lincoln – the first-ever Republican president — did not run for reelection equally a "Republican." A faction of the party dissever off and the main portion, which stuck with Lincoln, chosen itself the National Union Party. Hoping to attract the votes of Democrats who supported the war effort, the party nominated Johnson (who had been a Democrat) as Lincoln's running mate.

The NUP ticket won, of course, but Lincoln was assassinated five weeks after the inauguration, just equally the war was ending, and Johnson became president with virtually a full four-year term alee and a term in which the terms of the readmission and "reconstruction" of the seceded states would take to be piece of work out.

Although Lincoln had outlined a fairly moderate policy for dealing with the conquered South, the "Radical Republicans" who dominated the Congress had much more aggressive ideas.

If you get into the substance of the matter, the case can quickly become morally confusing. Johnson was a virulent racist. Although he did not favor secession, he too did not concord with the Rad Repub calendar to force the southern states to respect the rights of the newly freed slaves. He argued that blacks were "decadent in principle" and should never be given the correct to vote. He vetoed the Rad Repub bills. They overrode the vetoes (on one party-line vote later another). The Rad Repubs had 2-thirds majorities in both houses because, call up, the southern states weren't represented.

Johnson used his control of appointments to put men in charge in the occupied S who shared his views. By some accounts, the tension between the visions of Johnson versus the Rad Repubs was so hot that the Ceremonious War might accept cleaved dorsum out, although that seems far-fetched. In one five-month period, Johnson fired 1,352 postmasters around the state who were loyal Republicans and were non sympathetic to his policies.

Frustrated at Johnson'southward use of his date powers to frustrate their plan, the Repubs passed the Tenure of Role Act, which prohibited the president from firing whatever confirmed appointees without the Senate's agreement. That meant Johnson couldn't even make up one's mind who was in and out of his own cabinet. (Johnson vetoed the Tenure of Office bill, of course, but was quickly overridden. Years later, after Johnson was long gone, the Supreme Court did strike downwards the Tenure Act equally an unconstitutional congressional usurpation of presidential power.).

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a holdover from Lincoln'due south chiffonier, vehemently opposed Johnson's Reconstruction policies and used his place in the Chiffonier to spy for and collaborate with congressional Republicans. Johnson fired him on a Fri. The following Monday, by a party-line vote of 128-47, the House impeached Johnson without waiting for articles of impeachment, which were drawn up later.

Unfit to exist president
In that location were 11 counts, nine of which repeated over and once more that he had violated the Tenure of Function Human activity by firing Stanton. The concluding ii accused him of bringing Congress into "disgrace, ridicule, hatred, antipathy and reproach" by speeches he had given, and the 11th summarized the other 10 and said Johnson's conduct demonstrated his unfitness to be president.

Information technology seems pretty unlikely that Johnson'south offenses meet an objective standard of "loftier crimes and misdemeanors" which is what the Constitution establishes as necessary for impeachment and removal. But the Congress had had a bellyful of this accidental (and apparently obnoxious) president pursuing policies that he presumably felt were in the best interests of the land but which they felt strongly were not.

The trial of Johnson on the impeachment charges took 2 months on the Senate floor. Johnson wanted to attend to defend himself simply his lawyers insisted that the sight of him would energize the pro-impeachment forces.

More than than two-thirds of Senate members were Republicans. Seven would have to vote against the party line to salve Johnson'south presidency. As the vote approached, several expressed reservations.

Sen. Lyman Trumbull, an Illinois Republican and a friend of Lincoln, voted to bear. He said that if Johnson could be removed without having committed whatever real crimes or misdemeanors, and then "no future President will be prophylactic who happens to differ with the majority of the House and ii-thirds of the Senate on any measure deemed past them important." I hate to show undue sympathy for the racist Johnson, but I have to admit that Trumbull's point works for me.

Kansas Republican Edmund M. Ross was the seventh Repub to break ranks, which was but enough that the final Senate vote of 35-nineteen to remove Johnson fell one vote short of the two-thirds required past the Constitution. None of the vii Republicans voted against the party line was ever reelected.

When John F. Kennedy's ghostwriter Ted Sorenson wrote the Pulitzer Prize Winning "Profiles in Courage" most great acts of political principle, Ross was included as one of the case studies. But more recent scholarship ("Impeached" by David O. Stewart) concludes that Ross was receiving offers of various bribes and appointments in exchange for his vote and playing the sides off against each other. In full general, the level of bribery available was so prevalent that Stewart concluded that votes for Johnson's amortization "were purchased for with political deals, patronage promises and even greenbacks."

Johnson beat the confidence by ane vote and served out what was left of his term, returned to Tennessee, a hero for his defense of white supremacy, and was reelected to the Senate in 1874. When he died in 1875, he was cached with his head resting on a copy of the Constitution. How touching.

OK. Must. Stop. Render. To. Present.

I've been fairly depressed about all of Washington's recent deviations from the happy story we tell our kids in civics course near how our organization works. Information technology's actually much hard to take action than to block information technology. The boundaries of each branch's ability is not actually equally clear every bit we like to believe. The system actually doesn't work without compromise. But it doesn't quite fall apart either. At least then far. Which is pretty astonishing.

And nosotros've been through worse. Much worse. And here we still are.

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Source: https://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2011/11/why-president-andrew-johnson-was-impeached-and-why-we-should-care-today/

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