Pelosi’s Permanent Impeachment
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Bill Clinton was the first president to embrace the “permanent campaign,” meaning a White House always in full election mode. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has now made her own dubious contribution to American history, by setting up the possibility of a Congress in permanent impeachment mode.
The mechanics of impeachment almost always promise a clash between a president of one party and a Congress dominated by another. Even so, by forgoing a full House vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry, Mrs. Pelosi has amped up the partisanship. Instead of moving ahead with the full backing of the elected representatives of the American people, she has launched the Trump impeachment by personal ukase.
Even more remarkable, it has been greeted with a collective ho-hum. True, the Constitution does not require a House vote. It’s also true, however, that Mrs. Pelosi has no precedent for what she has done, and by eliminating a House vote, she has denied the House minority the opportunity to be heard before Congress begins exercising its most formidable constitutional power short of declaring war: the process of removing an elected president.
“Vigorous debate and formal votes are part of our democracy,” says Rep. Doug Collins, the Georgia Republican who serves as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. “When one party silences the other by gaveling down debate, denying subpoena power, and refusing to hold votes, they are hiding from accountability to their electorate, it’s more than partisan—it’s antidemocratic.”
It helps to compare what’s being done to Donald Trump to how it’s been done before. The first president to be impeached was Andrew Johnson, by a 126-47 House vote on Feb. 24, 1868. On March 2 the House voted to approve nine more articles of impeachment, and a day later added another two. Procedures weren’t precisely the same then, but the 40th Congress enjoyed something Speaker Pelosi has denied the 116th Congress: the opportunity to debate and vote before they had to declare themselves on specific articles of impeachment.
Cut to 1974, when Democrats moved against Richard Nixon. Because 106 years had passed since the House impeached a president, the committee and its staff—including a young Hillary Clinton—researched the past and produced a document called “ Constitutional Grounds for Impeachment .” On page 2, the report notes that the 410-4 House vote to open an impeachment inquiry against Nixon confirmed that the process “was not partisan. It was supported by the overwhelming majority in both parties.”
Not so for Mrs. Pelosi’s impeachment effort. In addition to dodging the accountability that comes when congressmen are forced to vote “yea” or “nay,” her decision carries implications for the powers of the committees involved. An official impeachment proceeding comes with powers that allow Congress to compel documents a president might otherwise withhold from normal oversight. If all it now takes for a committee to exercise these daunting powers is a speaker’s say-so, we are in new territory.
In 1974, Rep. John Conyers, a member of the Judiciary Committee, helped draft the articles of impeachment against Nixon. A quarter-century later, when a Republican House was about to impeach Bill Clinton, he insisted that the minority be granted subpoena power along with the majority. Democrats were given that power in the Clinton impeachment, just as Republicans had it in Nixon’s—but it’s tellingly absent in Mrs. Pelosi’s bid against Mr. Trump.
Then there’s Jerrold Nadler, chairman of today’s Judiciary Committee. Back in 1998, he thundered against Republicans for limiting floor debate to one hour before the House voted to authorize an impeachment inquiry against President Clinton. Mr. Nadler called the decision to shortchange the House debate a “supreme insult to the American people” and noted that the same House had spent more time the day before debating two resolutions about naming post offices.
Almost a year ago Mr. Nadler advanced a similar argument about the high bar for impeaching President Trump. “If you’re serious about removing a president from office, what you’re really doing is overturning the result of the last election,” he told Roll Call. “You don’t want to have a situation where you tear this country apart, and for the next 30 years half the country’s saying, ‘We won the election, you stole it.’ ” Today that Mr. Nadler is nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, with her decision to proceed with impeachment by fiat, Mrs. Pelosi has set many disturbing precedents—none more terrible than the idea that all you need is a willing speaker and you can put a congressional committee in permanent impeachment mode, using its powers to try to overturn an election.
By
Main Street columnist for The Wall Street Journal, former Editorial Page Editor of The New York Post, former chief speechwriter for George W. Bush.
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So let's get it straight, there is no Constitutional requirement for a House vote, but it is a dangerous precedent. Another of the many reckless moves made over & over again all in the name of removing Donald Trump from office. Impeachment is a serious matter and a vote must be held to give it legitimacy
You have some sort of deep longing for Donald Trump to be accepted by the majority of the American people and then he can be given the high place of honor that Trump voters delusionally believe he somehow deserves.
Not gonna happen in this lifetime. He's probably already seen the highest approval he will ever see, something in the low 40's.
He's entering his "low" period now.
Progressives do not constitute a majority despite their firm grip on the discredited media and the university. I don't think you realize all the damage that liberals have done. The next time we have a democrat president (hopefully never), he/she will not be treated as legitimate. The reactionary element of the right will endlessly attack whoever it is and seek to criminalize him/her. The founders set a high bar on impeachment. It has to be a high crime - reason to protect the three branches, lest our government morph into a Parliamentary form of government where the legislative branch controls the president.
Donald Trump is not even remotely qualified to be president of the United States. People like you dont seem to understand that and that is why we now have a "civil war".
The right and Trump voters brought all this on by voting for someone who had no business being within a million miles of the presidency.
Sorry, John, It dosen't work that way. We had an election and Trump won.
And Congress has been in their "low period" for about thirty years. Have they even topped 20%? But, the same people still keep being re-elected year after year after year.
Seems approval ratings mean nothing for electability.
What are the House rules on impeachment? We just saw McConnell say that if the House votes to impeach then the Senate would have to hold a trial because of long-standing Senate rules. There is no Constitutional requirement for either the House vote or the Senate trial. Does anybody know what the House rules on impeachment are? I don't and I really don't have the time to search for them.
In the House it is a three step procedure:
Confusing, isn't it?
I know those are the basic steps, my question was around the standing rules. In the Senate, McConnell has stated that because of the standing Senate rules if the House votes to impeach then the Senate MUST hold the trial. He cannot sit on the paperwork or ignore it, by rules it must be acted on. So my question is does the House have any standing rules around this? I know the House has precedent and all prior impeachment investigations started with a floor vote to authorize the investigation but this time Pelosi is not taking the vote.
This to me seems rather dangerous as it further weaponizes the impeachment process. There will be nothing to stop a Republican House from doing the same down the road to a Democratic President. It sure seems to be that the Democrats in the past 10 years or so have not been very good at predicting future issues when they make drastic immediate changes...
Not that the Republicans are much better...
And it now becomes more likely that it will happen.
Pelosi's hand to word sync. have been getting more erratic since this got going.
She's a mess !
No doubt. She looks very rattled lately.
Does the "Stuttering" thing more than before !
Nancy Pelosi didn't have much choice. The numbers were approaching the point where a no confidence vote would be viable and Pelosi could be removed as Speaker. The radicals and activists in the Democratic caucus have been challenging Pelosi since the midterms. And don't ignore the role of Adam Schiff in all of this; Schiff is concerned about about his political career.
An impeachment trial has become a necessity. Impeachment is the only way to shine some light onto the activities of the intelligence community. Democrats can take political potshots by citing sources and material that cannot be publicly disclosed for supposed reasons of national security. And Democrats have lost too much credibility to be simply believed without doubts; that's a consequence of the Mueller investigation. An impeachment trial cannot be conducted in secret session as the Democrats are conducting their investigations. All sources and material must be disclosed to the public or the legitimacy of the impeachment trial will not be accepted by the public.
Pelosi is not moving forward with impeachment; Pelosi is playing political games to retain her grip on the Speaker's chair. Slapping a 'new and improved' label on Democrats ongoing (and less than public) political investigations hasn't changed the nature of what is happening in the House. Pelosi has lost control; Pelosi is no longer in charge. Now Pelosi is applying the Democratic brand of politics to the Democratic caucus in the House to stall, misdirect, and divert attention away from her tenuous political position. Pelosi is quite willing to damage the republic for her political gain.
Trump must be impeached. Get on with it. Democrats are not running on alternative ideas; Democrats are running to remove Trump from office. That's it, that's all Democrats have to offer voters. Democrats failing to impeach Trump now will only reinforce the perception that Democrats are just playing the dirtiest of dirty political games.