The U.S. House’s impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s interactions with the president of Ukraine comes more than two decades after the last presidential impeachment crisis – the one that engulfed President Bill Clinton in 1998 and early 1999. The circumstances – factual, political and societal – were very different back then, and so was U.S. public opinion about the push for impeachment. …
One key difference between the Clinton impeachment and Richard Nixon’s experience a quarter-century earlier is that Clinton’s job approval ratings were already quite high before the scandal broke, and by and large they remained so. (Trump’s approval ratings have been fairly stable since the early days of his presidency, but at a considerably lower level – around 40% in a summer 2019 Pew Research Center survey.) CONT.
Drew DeSilver, Pew Research Center
