As the Trump impeachment inquiry proceeds, you will hear a lot about its similarities with the Johnson / Nixon / Clinton impeachments. Here I’ll discuss two structural features of the Trump impeachment inquiry that make it unique.
First, control of Congress is divided. In the Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton impeachment inquiries, both chambers of Congress were controlled by the opposition party.*** Currently, Democrats control the House and Republicans the Senate. Three implications:
1. Republicans can use their formal agenda and committee control to influence the inquiry. The House has the sole power of impeachment, but the Senate can conduct (or not) its own inquiry. The Nixon impeachment inquiry was driven, in part, by a Senate Select Committee. The GOP Senate may continue existing oversight investigations of the president and executive branch, but is unlikely to open a new investigation, and may use the committee system to promote an anti-impeachment case. Likewise, a unified GOP Senate majority can structure floor activity to ignore impeachment-related votes, or to hold impeachment-related votes that put pressure on moderate Democrats.
2. A Senate impeachment trial (or lack thereof) will be shaped by the GOP. There’s no constitutional requirement that the Senate consider House articles of impeachment. As Majority Leader McConnell noted yesterday, current Senate rules require them to “take up” impeachment, but a GOP majority could still dispose of it prior to a trial, or prior to a final vote. Republicans could also structure the trial in ways that favor their own political goals.
3. Moderate Senate Republicans have outsized potential power. While it would take 67 votes (and thus at least 20 Republican votes) to convict and remove President Trump, a much smaller number of Republican Senators could leverage the balance of power. If just four Republican Senators decide they want the president removed, they could threaten to abandon the GOP coalition on judicial nominations or other Senate business, effectively raising the cost for those still supporting the president.
Second, Trump is a candidate for re-election. Nixon and Clinton were second-term presidents in the post-22nd amendment era, barred from running for re-election in 1976 and 2000, respectively. Johnson was eligible for the 1868 election, but never a serious consideration. An ascended-president from a unity party that no longer existed, there was no chance the GOP was going to nominate Johnson, and only a smattering of support for him as a Democratic candidate. Trump, of course, is the default GOP nominee for 2020. Two implications:
1. Political strategy during the inquiry may more noticeably reflect election concerns. Impeachment is inherently a political process full of political strategy and calculation, but the prospect of wounding (or solidifying) not just the opposing party, but the actual opposing presidential nominee alters the entire exercise. One semi-serious line of logical thinking is that once Trump is so unpopular that Republicans want to get rid of him, he will be so electorally wounded Democrats will want to keep him around! That’s probably too cute by half, but it exemplifies how much 2020 considerations will be magnified throughout the impeachment inquiry. For example, Democrats may focus more on Trump’s future fitness for office than on the gravity of his past wrongdoings. Likewise, Republicans may focus more on process arguments about letting the election sort things out rather than substantive defenses of the conduct.
2. Everyone will be more sensitive to potential outlier developments. The most likely outcome of this impeachment inquiry is a roughly party-line impeachment and a roughly party-line acquittal in the Senate, with not much public opinion change about the president. But if the early stages of the inquiry prove significantly damaging to the president—imagine his public approval at 32% and a dozen House GOP members voting to impeach him—the looing election could alter the Senate GOP calculus, or draw new primary challengers, or both. Likewise, if the inquiry turns out to be a dud with independent voters or drives up the president’s approval, Democratic candidates for president may wish to see impeachment shelved so they can focus on other critiques of the president.
***Johnson, a Democrat, had run under the National Union party label—a centrist fusion of mainline Republicans and War Democrats—in 1864, as had Lincoln and many Republicans in the House and Senate. During his post-war presidency, however, he was quite obviously a Democrat faced with an opposition Republican Congress.
