The Impeachment Trap

There is a scene every American should remember, though most have already forgotten it. In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton described impeachment as a procedure of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political. He warned that it would be conducted by men who, from the very nature of their situation, will be too often little other than the leaders of their own parties. Hamilton saw the danger clearly: impeachment would become not a constitutional remedy, but a party weapon. Two centuries later, we have made his warning a reality. We have turned the Constitution's last resort into a political bludgeon, and in doing so, we have wounded the republic itself.

Let's start with first principles, because that's where every honest argument must begin. The Constitution's impeachment clause, Article II, Section 4, was never designed to be a routine check on presidential power. It was designed as a constitutional circuit breaker, a mechanism of last resort for removing a president who had committed grave abuses threatening the constitutional order itself. The standard is high: "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." That language was chosen deliberately, after long debate. James Madison, the father of the Constitution, argued in the Virginia ratification debates that impeachment was necessary precisely because a president might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. Note the words: peculation, meaning embezzlement or self-dealing, and oppression, meaning tyranny against the people. Madison was not worried about policy disagreements. He was worried about a president who would turn the office into a vehicle for personal enrichment or the destruction of republican liberty.

What the Founders Actually Built

The Founders also understood a truth that modern partisans refuse to learn: impeachment is a poison. It should be administered only in the tiniest, most desperate doses. That is why they required a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate for conviction. They knew that a simple majority in the House could impeach on party lines, but that the Senate, with its longer terms and broader perspective, would act as a cooling saucer. A supermajority would ensure that only genuinely dangerous abuses could overcome the barrier. And they knew something else: the real remedy for a bad president is the ballot box, not a House vote and a show trial on cable news.

The first American impeachment, of Senator William Blount in 1797, was for treasonous conspiracy. The second, of Judge John Pickering in 1804, was for drunkenness and mental incompetence on the bench. The third, Justice Samuel Chase in 1805, was a purely partisan attempt that failed precisely because the Senate refused to remove a judge for his political opinions. That failure set the standard: impeachment is for crimes against the state, not for unpopular policies. For nearly two centuries, that standard held. Andrew Johnson was impeached in 1868 for violating the Tenure of Office Act, a clearly political act, but Congress at least offered a legal hook. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 only after the House passed articles of impeachment for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress, genuine abuses that even many Republicans acknowledged.

Then came Bill Clinton in 1998. Clinton was impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice, actual crimes, serious ones, committed under oath. But the Senate acquitted him because the public saw the offense as personal, not a threat to the constitutional order. And that acquittal opened a door. If perjury in a federal civil rights case was not enough to remove a president, what was? The answer, as the next two decades proved, was nothing, or rather, anything the opposition party could muster a majority for.

How We Broke It

Donald Trump was impeached twice: first for pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, then for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Both were historic, unprecedented in their speed and in the partisan unanimity of the House vote. The second impeachment even occurred after Trump had left office, a constitutional novelty with no precedent. And again, he was acquitted both times. The result is a pattern that Thomas Sowell would recognize instantly: the gap between intentions and results. Each impeachment drive was launched with the intention of defending the Constitution. What they actually produced were a normalization of the process, deepened partisan polarization, and a shifting of power from the people to Washington.

Impeachment has become a routine procedural step, just another item on the legislative calendar. The more you do it, the less it means. Each impeachment drive hardens the opposition party's loyalty to its leader, even when that leader has done things the party would otherwise condemn. The president becomes a martyr, and the process becomes a rallying cry. The Founders created a republic where the ultimate check on a president was the electorate every four years. Now the losing party's first recourse is the impeachment clause, a backdoor override of the voters' will.

The Knowledge Problem in Impeachment

Friedrich Hayek taught us about the knowledge problem: no central planner can gather the dispersed knowledge that a free people use to make decisions. The same principle applies to impeachment. The House cannot possibly adjudicate the complex motivations and facts of a president's actions through partisan hearings, closed-door depositions, and televised grandstanding. The process is designed for maximum political theater and minimum genuine accountability. Consider the Ukraine impeachment. The House heard from witnesses, reviewed documents, and voted on articles. But the Senate trial was a farce: no witnesses, no new evidence, and a speedy acquittal. The entire exercise consumed six months of the nation's attention, produced no change in the president's behavior, and left the public more polarized than ever.

Milton Friedman would ask: what was the cost? The cost was the time and energy of Congress that could have been spent on legislation, oversight of the administrative state, or addressing real problems. The cost was the erosion of trust in the process itself. Here is the deepest corruption: the standard has shifted from high crimes and misdemeanors, which the Founders understood as abuses of the office itself, to any policy action the opposition finds objectionable. That shift is not accidental. It is the predictable result of treating the Constitution as a political document rather than a binding law.

The Constitutional Injury

John Adams wrote that the American government was a government of laws, and not of men. But a government of laws only works when the men in office obey the laws, including the law that says impeachment is a remedy of last resort. When the House impeaches a president for a phone call with a foreign leader, or for speech protected by the First Amendment, or for actions that were never proven to be illegal, they are not enforcing the Constitution. They are rewriting it through political power. And they are doing so without the consent of the governed, without the amendment process, and without any accountability to the people who elected the president in the first place.

Thomas Sowell once wrote that the first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The same is true of constitutional legitimacy. The impeachment power is a scarce resource. Every time you use it for a partisan purpose, you deplete the public's faith in the process. You teach the citizenry that the Constitution is just a set of rules to be manipulated, not a solemn compact to be honored. Milton Friedman would add that nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Substitute constitutional authority for money. The House treats impeachment as a cost-free gesture because the cost is borne not by them, but by the institutions of the republic. They spend the credibility of the presidency, the Senate, and the Constitution itself on performative outrage, and they do it without ever asking the American people for permission.

A Way Forward

If we are to recover the Constitution's design, we need to stop treating impeachment like a political toy. Here are three principles that would restore the process to its proper role. First, raise the bar back to the Founders' standard. Before any impeachment vote, the House should be required to identify a specific constitutional injury, not just a political grievance, not a policy disagreement, not a failure to testify in a partisan investigation. The standard should be: would James Madison call this peculation or oppression? Second, restore the normal political process. If you do not like a president, win the next election. Offer a better vision. Persuade voters. Impeachment is a poor substitute for persuasion. The Founders gave the people the power to replace a president every four years. That power is not a bug; it is the feature. Third, remember the republic. We are not a democracy where fifty-one percent can do anything. We are a constitutional republic where even the majority must respect the bounds of law. The impeachment power is part of those bounds. When we break those bounds, we break the republic itself.

The Founders warned us. Hamilton, Madison, and Adams all saw the danger. The economists among us, Sowell, Friedman, Hayek, showed us the unintended consequences of ignoring incentives and constitutional structure. And the history books are already being written. The question is whether we will learn the lesson before the next impeachment drive begins. I am not betting on it, but I am still arguing for it. That is the duty of a citizen in a republic.