Bill Cotterell: Impeachment about politics, public relations
The U.S. House unleashing its awesome power of impeachment is a major historic event now reduced to a sort of political hissy fit.
There are better, easier ways to oust a high-ranking federal official who falls from favor in Washington. Congressional leaders can diplomatically send word to that White House that someone is a political liability, and, pretty soon, the scorned federal officer will decide to spend more time with his family, or be named ambassador to Coventry, or just find a cushy job in the private sector.
But ever since Richard Nixon had to flee from a richly deserved impeachment resolution, the solemn process of removing important federal officers has become a partisan get-even device. The current Republican-run House has made it something like a political 911 call.
Worse, both parties have loaded and cocked an elephant gun to hunt mouse, knowing they couldn’t bag their prey.
Not to spoil the ending, but Alejandro Mayorkas isn’t going anywhere. The secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will keep his job, despite the House vote to impeach him this month. Even if the impeachment resolution had passed by a large bipartisan majority, there is no possibility of 67 senators voting for it.
The resolution passed 214-213 in the House, with all the Democrats and three Republicans opposing it. A similar resolution had failed in the House a week earlier in a humiliating setback for Speaker Mike Johnson and his party. This time, they had to rush one member to the Capitol from his hospital bed to get the one-vote margin in the floor vote.
All of which indicates that while there is a nationwide groundswell of public rage against the Biden administration over illegal immigration, Mayorkas doesn’t make a handy fall guy. In fact, one House Republican, French Hill of Arkansas, spoke the quiet part out loud when he said the Department of Homeland Security secretary “will pay this public relations price” for hundreds of thousands of migrants straining welfare services in major cities.
So that’s what it’s come to — instead of punishing corrupt or subversive federal officers, impeachment now hinges on whether the public is angry enough.
OK, nobody’s saying the border is secure or that immigration isn’t a mess. So, the opposition party should make daily speeches about it, go on Sunday political talk shows, and blame Biden, stage news events at the border, make ads exploiting the crisis and promise to clean up the mess next year.
Maybe Mayorkas has done a lousy job. That’s for Biden to decide. If he wants to seek re-election with Mayorkas in the Cabinet, Congress shouldn’t interfere.
The Constitution is purposely vague, providing, “The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Maybe it should also say “incompetency” or “somebody we don’t like,” but it doesn’t.
Not even the most rabid Republican accuses Mayorkas of treason or bribery — and he hasn’t been convicted of any high crimes and misdemeanors, whatever those are.
But former President Donald Trump hasn’t been convicted of anything either, yet he got whacked twice when Democrats controlled the House. Everyone knew the Senate would fall short of 67 votes to convict him each time.
Aside from Mayorkas, there’s now a move afoot in the House to impeach Biden. The same math makes it meaningless in the Senate.
Impeachment has always been frankly political.
Andrew Johnson, a thoroughly unlikable fellow who defied Congress right after the Civil War, survived in the Senate. A little more than a century later, Nixon’s resignation cheated the hangman in the face of guaranteed removal. Bill Clinton probably deserved the boot, but the Senate decided his lying and obstruction was more humorous than damaging to the country.
Trump gave them plenty to work with, but there was never any chance that either of his two impeachment cases would get a two-thirds Senate roll call.
About a half-century ago, Michigan Congressman Gerald Ford proposed impeaching Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. Ford said impeachment is a political act, and “high crimes and misdemeanors” are anything Congress decides they are.
Lawyers, historians and politicians quibble over constitutional fine points. But serious business of impeachment shouldn’t be devalued as just an election-year “public relations price.”
Bill Cotterell is a retired Capitol reporter for United Press International and the Tallahassee Democrat. He writes a weekly column for The News Service of Florida and City & State Florida. He can be reached at bcotterell@govexec.com.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Bill Cotterell: Impeachment about politics, public relations
