Look to Nixon, not Clinton, for best impeachment comparisons

In putting President Trump’s impeachment in perspective, reporters and pundits have tended to focus on the comparison of his impeachment with that of President Clinton. That seems a natural comparison, given its closeness to our own time (barely two decades removed) and the embarrassing statements that a number of the Republican senators, who were involved in both impeachments, made in support of Clinton’s removal, for far lesser offenses than those for which Trump has been charged.

But the more appropriate comparison would seem to be that of Trump’s impeachment with that of Richard Nixon’s in 1973-74. That comparison allows us to examine the way in which the Republicans in the 1970s approached impeachment and how their descendants treated it in 2020. Not a pretty comparison. One gets a clear printout of how intellectually and morally bankrupt the present Republican Party has become.

In 1973-74, unlike the current Republican Congressional caucus’s disdain (if secret) for their presidential leader, a large majority of Congressional Republicans liked Nixon, felt somewhat beholden to him, and initially wanted to do what they could to protect his presidency from the Democratic attempts to remove him. But, unlike their successors, they were open to the evidence, the truth. And, through the long Senate inquiry in the summer of 1973, and the investigations of the independent counsel, and the crisis brought on by the Saturday Night Massacre, and the subsequent report that the House Judiciary Committee took up, they participated in the proceedings, in good faith (for the most part). And a critical mass of the Republicans, like Larry Hogan of Maryland, and Howard Baker on the Senate side, followed the evidence, despite it taking them to a place they did not want to be. And in the end, they both decided that Nixon was guilty. And a large number of House and Senate Republicans agreed. Hugh Scott and Barry Goldwater led the delegation of Republicans who went to Nixon to tell him that resignation was his best option. Otherwise, he was going to be removed from office by two-thirds of the Senate. So much for the “historical” wisdom that it is simply impossible, given the Senate rules, to remove any president from office, no matter what his transgressions.

Can anyone imagine this scenario today, in the face of the travesty we have been forced to witness over the past month? Even though what Trump did is manifestly worse than anything Nixon did? The universal expectation at the outset was that the Senate would acquit, no matter what evidence was presented, no matter how effective a prosecution the House managers mounted. The Republican Senate caucus, with the sole honorable exception of Mitt Romney (God bless him), told the world that they were no longer an independent body examining the president’s action in consequence of their Constitutional obligation to hold the president accountable. No, they were jurors who were using their position to nullify the impeachment charges, not on the grounds of the managers’ failure to prove their case, but on whatever grounds the Senators chose to rationalize their decision to let the president off scot-free. Reason, truth, law, Constitution – none of these previously considered keystones of our democracy any longer applied when it concerned Donald John Trump. He was, to these persons who still dared call themselves Republicans – for a constellation of despicable motives – above them all. Just an abject capitulation that was on full display in the Republicans’ raucous response to Trump’s campaign rally/reality show on Tuesday night,

Someone needs to sear into the souls of these senators what the Senate chaplain, Barry Black, had the courage, in front of the gathered body of the Senate, to implore of God in his opening prayer last week: “Remind our senators that they alone are accountable to you for their conduct,” Black said. “Lord, help them to remember that they can’t ignore you and get away with it. For we always reap what we sow.” Amen.

Robert Emmett Curran is Professor of History Emeritus from Georgetown University.