I’ll admit that I’m a bit flummoxed by the current political moment. I like to look at numbers, to get some sense of where things are by looking at where they’ve been and what happened when they were there before. So the current push to consider impeaching President Trump is […] Read more »
Why Trump’s impeachment inquiry will be more divisive than Nixon/Clinton
If impeachment of the president is always a match, today it is dropping into a much larger pool of gasoline than it did under President Richard Nixon or even President Bill Clinton. After years of steadily rising partisan conflict, the inquiry that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced last week may […] Read more »
President Pence’s First and Worst Choice
Donald Trump will probably finish out this term, although those odds have dropped significantly in the past week. But what would happen if he actually left office? One of the main legacies would be that Mike Pence would face a horrible choice over whether to pardon Trump. Let’s just imagine […] Read more »
This is my third impeachment. Here’s what I’ve learned.
… No two presidents are alike, of course, and no two impeachment battles are alike. Nixon resigned in disgrace in 1974 once it was clear that he would be impeached by the House and removed by the Senate. Clinton was impeached by the House but acquitted in the Senate, and […] Read more »
Impeachment and public opinion: Three key indicators to watch
There have been two serious efforts in the past half-century to impeach and remove a U.S. president from office. The first, which ended in 1974, led to the resignation of its target—President Richard Nixon. The second, which began in 1998 against President Bill Clinton, led to the resignation of the […] Read more »
Public opinion could shift slowly on impeachment, but it will move
… Previous impeachment efforts show that public opinion, however entrenched it may seem, does move as Americans tune into the debate in Washington. When Republicans impeached President Clinton, public opinion started out divided. But by the time the House voted to impeach, in December 1998, Americans had reached a verdict: […] Read more »