Every Impeachment Has Been A Stain

I hear a few desperate voices here and there declaiming that the Senate trial isn’t over and that Donald Trump hasn’t been acquitted yet.

Those Lefties with a firmer grasp of reality will grant that it’s all done except for the crying. Well more crying. I mean when have they stopped crying since 2016? You’d think they’d be saving up a little for election night because no matter what the echo chamber is telling them, every single Democrat candidate is basically unelectable.

But then in desperation, they throw out the tagline, “this impeachment will leave a stain!”

True enough. Every impeachment has indeed left a stain.

On Congress.

The Impeachment process has never once been used as it was meant to. It has never once had at it’s the desire to remove a president for criminal actions.

Andrew Johnson.

Andrew Johnson was impeached for two reasons. One, he wasn’t being anywhere near extreme enough in retaliating against the South after the Civil War.

And, two, presidential succession was quite vague and nebulous. The constitution stated, in the event of the president dying, the vice president would ACT as president. It didn’t say anything about him taking the oath of office. It didn’t say that that the vice president would succeed the fallen president. It specifically said, ACT as president implying that he would remain the vice president.

When the constitution was first adopted it’s fairly obvious that the vice president was supposed to be something of a co-consul. Being President of the Senate was supposed to give him some power. The VP was supposed to be the guy who came in second during the presidential election. Initially, this was the case and resulted in Vice President Jefferson hamstringing President Adams for most of this presidency.

Shortly after that, the party system emerged and they would offer a slate of two candidates for president and vice president.

John Tyler was the first Vice President of the United States to become president, a mere twenty-four years before Johnson’s succession. Tyler’s succession was so controversial he didn’t dare try to appoint a vice president of his own and spent his whole single term fighting efforts to delegitimize him as president.

Those harsh feelings were still there when Johnson replaced (the suddenly beloved) Lincoln as president.

Richard Nixon.

Nixon’s crime was covering up his very tangential, after the fact, involvement with the Watergate Break In. His real crime was that the Oil Crisis had dropped his popularity into the teens. Plus, he was facing a press siege that was unprecedented. The Right-wing press had quietly died a few years before and the Left wing press finally noticed that it was free to say whatever it liked and it did.

Bill Clinton.

Bill Clinton’s crime was a fairly straight forward perjury on camera. A clear felony. His real crime was that the press couldn’t be made to report on his bad character. Nothing could be made to stick to Slick Willie because the press utterly refused to cover it. Honestly, that was pretty much it. I remember my frustration that he couldn’t be held to account by this public institution, (god, I was so young).

The truth is that none of this country’s impeachments have ever been motivated by the desire to remove a president because of criminal activity.

It was always about hurt feewings.

Trump’s impeachment is no different. The only thing it’s done is shore up his support with the mugwumps before November.