{"id":1138,"date":"2019-12-06T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-12-06T06:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=podcast&p=1138"},"modified":"2020-11-16T13:42:37","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T19:42:37","slug":"ep-68-the-first-presidential-impeachment-lessons-and-legacies","status":"publish","type":"podcast","link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast\/ep-68-the-first-presidential-impeachment-lessons-and-legacies\/","title":{"rendered":"This is Democracy \u2013 Episode 68: The First Presidential Impeachment: Lessons and Legacies"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week Jeremi and Zachary sit down with Professor Manisha Sinha to talk about the first presidential impeachment of Andrew Jackson and reflect on what lessons we can take from the events of the past that apply to our political and societal climate today.<\/p>\n

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Lessons from the 19th Century.”<\/p>\n

Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina, which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico in 2015 and recently featured in The New York Times\u2019 1619 Project. Her multiple award winning second monograph The Slave\u2019s Cause: A History of Abolition was long listed for the National Book Award for Non Fiction. It was named the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication and one of three great History books of 2016 in Bloomberg News. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including two yearlong research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2018, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris, Diderot and was elected to the Society of American Historians. She is a member of the Board of the Society of Civil War Historians and of the Council of Advisors of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg, New York Public Library. She taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for over twenty years, where she was awarded the Chancellor\u2019s Medal, the highest recognition bestowed on faculty. She is currently writing a book on the \u201cgreater reconstruction\u201d of American democracy after the Civil War, which is under contract with Basic Books.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week Jeremi and Zachary sit down with Professor Manisha Sinha to talk about the first presidential impeachment of Andrew Jackson and reflect on what lessons we can take from the events of the past that apply to our political and societal climate today. Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Lessons from the 19th […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2019\/12\/This-is-Democracy-Episode-68.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"46.19M","filesize_raw":"48430688","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[382,383,5,384,381,380,351,306],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-1138","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-382","6":"tag-andrew-jackson","7":"tag-democracy","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-first","10":"tag-impeachment","11":"tag-lessons","12":"tag-president","13":"series-this-is-democracy","14":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":301,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2019-01-15 11:25:23","post_date_gmt":"2019-01-15 17:25:23","post_content":"I am a child of the global transformations that re-made societies in the last century\u2013war, migration, nation-building, and mobility through higher education. All of my research, writing, and teaching seeks to explain these transformations\u2013their diverse origins, their contradictory contours, and their long-lasting effects. My scholarship is therefore an extended inquiry into the workings of power at local and international levels, and the interactions across these levels. Like other historians, I treat power as contingent, context-dependent, and often quite elusive. Like practitioners of politics, I view power as essential for any meaningful achievement, especially in the realms of social justice and democratization.\n\nMy hope is that my work will reach a broad and diverse audience of citizens. Scholarship cannot substitute for real-lived experience, but I believe it can enhance our contemporary understanding of the choices we confront in the allocation of our resources, the structuring of our communities, and the judgment of merit. In this framework, international, transnational, and global history should contribute to better thinking about current international, transnational, and global problems. I am a proponent of historical and political studies that are broad, compelling, creative, and, ultimately, useful. We should research with Monkish rigor, as we write (and lecture) with novelistic flair.\n\nResearch interests\nThe formation and spread of nation-states; the emergence of modern international relations; the connections between foreign policy and domestic politics; the rise of knowledge institutions as global actors.\n\nCourses taught\nInternational History since 1898; The Past and Future of Global Strategy; American Foreign Relations\n\nAwards, Honors\nRecognized as one of \"America's Top Young Innovators\" by Smithsonian Magazine; Class of 1955 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Wisconsin","post_title":"Jeremi Suri","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"jeremi-suri","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2022-06-02 13:27:50","post_modified_gmt":"2022-06-02 18:27:50","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=301","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":1140,"post_author":"38","post_date":"2019-12-05 12:17:46","post_date_gmt":"2019-12-05 18:17:46","post_content":"\n

Manisha Sinha is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and a leading authority on the history of slavery and abolition and the Civil War and Reconstruction. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She is the author of The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina, which was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico in 2015 and recently featured in The New York Times\u2019 1619 Project. Her multiple award winning second monograph The Slave\u2019s Cause: A History of Abolition was long listed for the National Book Award for Non Fiction. It was named the book of the week by Times Higher Education to coincide with its UK publication and one of three great History books of 2016 in Bloomberg News. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including two yearlong research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2018, she was a Visiting Professor at the University of Paris, Diderot and was elected to the Society of American Historians. She is a member of the Board of the Society of Civil War Historians and of the Council of Advisors of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg, New York Public Library. She taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for over twenty years, where she was awarded the Chancellor\u2019s Medal, the highest recognition bestowed on faculty. She is currently writing a book on the \u201cgreater reconstruction\u201d of American democracy after the Civil War, which is under contract with Basic Books.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Manisha Sinha","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"manisha-sinha","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-10-05 11:42:36","post_modified_gmt":"2020-10-05 16:42:36","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/?post_type=speaker&p=1140","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":"

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Narration: This is Democracy, a podcast that explores the interracial, intergenerational, and intersectional unheard voices living in the world’s most influential democracy.Jeremi Suri: Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today’s episode finally addresses the issue of impeachment. We’ve been holding off on that, but we’ve come to the conclusion now that the historical foundation for our current issues is something we do need to explore. And we’re very fortunate today that we have, I think,the person who is doing the most interesting work on the 19th Century and someone who has written recently about the first presidential impeachment, the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. Wehave with us ProfessorManisha Sinha, she’s a professor atthe University of Connecticut, she’s the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History there. She’s the author of two prize winning books, the first, “The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina” and more recently, really a tremendous hit book, “The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition.” Many of our listeners, I’m sure, are familiar with Manisha also from her recent article in the New York Times,published on December 1st,comparing Presidents Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump. Manisha, thank you for joining us.Manisha Sinha: Thank you for having me.Jeremi: Our pleasure. Before we turn to our discussion with Manisha, we have of course Zachary’s scene setting poem. Zachary, what’s the title of your poem today?Zachary Suri: Lessons from the 19th Century.Jeremi: Well, let’s hear about the lessons.Zachary: It’s a little odd today to think that we could gain some insight from those backwater days, those days of ferry crossings and beatings on the Senate floor, a little hard to think of anything but dusty top hats and horse drawn carriages, like Reconstruction truly was building it all again. And it is, on the other hand, far too cynical to say that we are at the precipice of a second civil war, like we needto draw blood to stay sane, or that we are a polar society colliding on the edges of sanity, or that our moment is some anomaly of freedom where black is suddenly white and white is black. But there is a look in the eyes of those old photographs that age quietly in sepia haze that seem so familiar. The conviction votes in the Senate that come down to the wire, and the sense of tension and the heavy water pitchers of responsibility. There was a look in their eyes that feels so much like our own. And historyis about trying to understand, trying to do better.History is the ultimate sign of progress, that we can look back at the photographs of the mangled bodies and understand it better than the photographer could possibly comprehend. It is the ultimate sign of progress and the lessons that come flowing out of the past, like the gooey syrup of sweet renewal on top of pancake stacks of old history textbooks. And sometimes when the scaffolding comes off, when the fantasy-nostalgia disappears, when we can stare down to the pit of old photographs without some fear of disenchantment, we can understand some semblance of where we are,floating out without predetermined destiny.Jeremi: What is your poem about, Zachary?Zachary: Well, my poem is really about how, whenwe think about the historical lessons that we can gain from the 19th Century, we need to look at the past and its fascinating history as a way, not of<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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determining our future or of necessarily prescribing what is going on in our society today, but about understanding where we are and thinking about where we need to go.Jeremi: Hmm, I think that’s a good place to turn to the first presidential impeachment and what happened then and how it affects us today. Manisha, why was President Andrew Johnson impeached?Manisha: Well,there were 11 articles of impeachment against Andrew Johnson and the first 9 had to do with the fact that he had violated a federal law, the Tenure of Office Act, which was passed in 1867,by firing Lincoln’s secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.And the reason why Congress had passed that law in the first place, which was,of course,encroaching a bit on Executive privilege, was because Johnson had been a very obstructionist president and had consistently tried to undermine Reconstruction, which was this project to establish an interracial democracy in the post-war South after the demise of slavery. And he had just been firing Union Army officers, pardoning a whole slew of high-rankingConfederates indiscriminately. It was quite clear that he would undermine Congress and its laws. He vetoed the most number of laws of any president and his vetoes were consistently overridden by Congress. So,it was a way to contain his destructive role at that time as a kind of an accidental precedent.Jeremi: Right, right. He of course became president after Lincoln’s assassination. The impeachment occurred in 1868, why did it take so long then? I mean, if he was so clearly obstructionist toward Congressional activities,beginning in 1865 when he took over, why did it take until 1868 for this moment to occur?Manisha: So, what happens is when Congress figures out that Johnson is not going to continue with Lincoln’s policy, that he was going to be this retrograde president who is going to completely undermine the Union victory in the Civil War, they start containing him. First,by simply overriding all his vetoes by–and you know overriding a president’s veto is not a simple thing, you need atwo-thirdsmajority in both houses and,indeed,the Northern public had handed a rebuketo Johnson by electing a kind of super majority of Republicans in both houses of Congress. So,they felt they could contain him and the Tenure of Office Act was to prevent him from firing Edwin Stanton,who was a very crucial member of the cabinet because he is Lincoln’s appointee, he has the back of most of these Union Army officers who are charged with implementing Reconstruction law and policies in the South. So,he was an important person to have in place, and he was not necessarily a radical Republican himself, but the war had actually radicalized many Republicans, like Stanton,and he was very committed to carrying on that policy of Reconstruction. So,they passed the law in order to make sure that Johnson would not replace him the way he had replaced many anti-slavery Union generals in the South and instead gotten very conservative appointees who were appointed,basically,to undermine Reconstruction in the South.Jeremi: I see.Manisha: So, that was like the smoking gun, so they wantedto contain him, they passed this law and the expectation was that he wouldn’t violate the law but he did and he ended up firing Stanton and that’s why he was–so that was the smoking gun, but of course the list of offenses that they had against Johnson was long in the making.Jeremi: Right, and to get into that for one second, is it a fair characterization to say that Congress had passed a series of laws and members of Congress who voted for impeachment believed that the<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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president was not enforcing and putting into place those laws that Congress had passed. Is that a fair characterization?Manisha: Absolutely. Not only was he not enforcing them, but he was actively undermining them.Jeremi: Right, right.Manisha: So,for instance the Civil Rights Act, the very first Civil Rights Act ever passed in the country’s history,of 1866, which was passed over his veto. Or the Freedman’s Bureau Act, which was also passed over his veto,which is a federal government agency overseeing the transition from slavery to freedom in the South,and really trying to maintain a semblance of the rule of law in the South at that time. So,all these laws had been vetoed by Johnson and they had overridden his veto, so it’s quite clear that Johnson would do anything to undermine policy. He would also encourage,actually,Southern white resistance to the implementation of these laws. He would fire Union Army generals who were there in place to make sure that you don’t have kind of an open season of racialterror against freed people.Jeremi: Right.Manisha: Which was happening in the South, the Ku Klux Klan was already founded in 1866. So,in a way, Johnson is inspiring and actually instigating a lot of Southern white resistance to Reconstruction policy and in the North, the feeling isthat he has actually–he was stripping away the victory that they had won, right? We’ve had a war for five years and slavery is destroyed but Johnson was making sure that all that bloodshed and all the treasure that had been spent to Reconstruct the Union was for nothing because you’d go back to square one with African-Americans being reduced to a state of semi-servitude. Ironically,that’s what happens after Reconstruction is eventually overthrown, but at that time there was no Northern appetite for that. And Johnson took his case to the people, he would hold these rallies where he would accuse radical Republicans and Abolitionists of being traitors and argue that the Confederates,who had actually taken up arms against the Union,were the real heroes andwere being victimized by these radicals. So yeah.Jeremi: Just to–I want us to stay in the 1860’s for a while longer in this conversation, but just to draw one comparison to today, is it fair to say that this was an instance, maybe analogous to what some are claiming today where Congress passed legislation to provide aid to Ukraine and the President actively undermined it, do you see an equivalence between that and what Johnson did with regard to the Civil Rights Act and the Freedman’s Bureau Act and others?Manisha: Absolutely, you know I feel that Trump has been systematically undermining federal laws encroaching on Congressionalpowersalso,in a way,because he either vetoes or does not implement laws passed by Congress. If it’s the case of Ukraine,where he withheld the aid, clearly,forpersonal political gain and that’s the smoking gun now with the infamoustelephone call with the President of Ukraine. But even prior to that, you could see Congress wants to punish Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and Trump just overrules that. So,the question becomes, his policies don’t seem to be dictated by any respect for the powers of Congress, for the laws passed by Congress or for the rule of law in general. And I think that’s very very troublingand it does–it struck me, just being immersed right now writing a book about Reconstruction and having just written about Johnson’s impeachment, I was struck by the sort of uncanny, virtually eerie parallels between Johnson’s presidency and the kinds ofthings he did with what Trump has been doing and the way in which he acted with Ukraine, yes.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Jeremi: Yes, Zachary?Zachary: Are there parallels in the ways that personality politics and the sort of politics of emotion that we’re seeing rather recently with the impeachment inquiry and impeachment votes, was that something that played a role in this clash in the late 19th Century?Manisha: That’s a very interesting question because Johnson was also known for lacking any kind of public decorum.Jeremi: (laughs) Right.Manisha: He was–or personal, you know he was drunk at his swearing in, he was drunk when he was sworn in as Vice President, he was not known to be very erudite, he had been illiterate most of his life, had gained literacy only as an adult. I mean ironically,he was born very poor as a poor Southern white man who eventually became a slave holder and a politician,and a fairly successful one at that. But personally,he was disliked, we have some evidence that his wife didn’t like him either (laughs).Jeremi: Wow.Manisha: And that she kind of stayed away from the White House while he was president. And he just doesn’t seem to be a very likable character, even the people who were defending him would sometimes be uncomfortable with the way in which he would conduct himself, so the lack of presidential demeanor, you could say, or your public decorum that people sometimes look for in the President of the United States. So,you could say, yes, he was–there’s some emotion involved therebecause he seemed to have been personally disliked and publicly also disliked a lot, especially in the Republican press. There’s a parallel there, too I think,Trump seems to arouse very strong emotions in the public.Jeremi: Yes.Manisha: You know people who don’t like him a lot and people who, as he said, he could shoot a man in 5th Avenue in broad daylight who would still support him if he did that. So,that element is certainly there.Jeremi: So,one big difference, Manisha, seems to be that, as you said before, the Republicans who were opposed to Johnson and wanted to remove him from office, they had a super majority in both houses and of course voted to impeach him, but then he was not convicted in the Senate, what happened there?Manisha: So,Johnson comes very close to being convicted. You need a two-thirdsmajority in the Senate to convict a president, to impeach a president. So,he’s impeached in the House, the trial is held in the Senate and they had the two-thirdsmajority, the Republican party, but seven people, seven moderate Republicans decided not to impeach Johnson because he assuredthem, throughhis attorney,that he would no longer interfere in Reconstruction policy. So,the two-thirdsmajority was lost by one vote, which is quite tragic if you think about it because theyhad–they nearly had the two-thirdsmajority and they jumped through all these impossible hoops that are set up to impeach a president who is truly negligent and criminal in his office. And they lose that by one vote, a lot of people blame Edmund Ross,who was actually evoked today as a hero by Johnathan Turley, one of the law school professors<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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testifying for the House Judiciary committee. But actually, Ross was bribed by patronage to change his vote and to actually free Johnson. So,he was notheroic at all. You could say that he was actually pretty corrupt,that he was bribed.Jeremi: I’m so glad you brought that up–Manisha: Yeah.Jeremi: Because I was thinking about that as I was watching the Judiciary Committee hearings as well, that precise point, and it might be worth elaborating on that. So,Ross is one of the seven Republicans who vote against conviction of President Andrew Johnson. In what way was Ross bribed by President Johnson?Manisha: Apparently,he was promised patronage and there was actually an inquiry against him, the way there’s one against Representative Devin Nunes for his own dealings with Ukraine and his conflict of interest that he did not reveal to the intelligence committee, so there’s another parallel I guess. But this guy was a Senator and there was some inquiry held because they thought that he had actually been bribed. He is not impeached, he does not stand for election again, he kind of retires from politics after this. But this notion of his wrongdoing, this talk of him beingbribed was actually discussed even then. And most historians agree that there was some kind of deal struck between Johnson and Ross.Jeremi: What about the other six? I mean he was not the only one, why didn’t they, when they had the chance to remove thishorrible president, who they didn’t like personally either, who was never elected president in the case of President Johnson, why did Ross and six others not go for the jugular?Manisha: So,the other six are all moderate Republicans and two of them actually, Lyman Trumbull and William Fessenden,were actually responsible for some of the Reconstruction laws that we admire. So,it is interesting to see why they stepped back and why they felt that they would take Johnson’s assurance that he would no longer interfere in Reconstruction if he was just allowed to serve out his term. Everyone knew that Johnson was damaged goods after impeachment, he was not going to get any presidential nomination after his impeachment and they thought it’s probably for the best to just let him fill out the term. But I also think that they were wary of Benjamin Wade,who was the Speaker of the House. So,because Johnson became president after Lincoln was assassinated, he didn’t have a vice president. So,if he had been impeached then Benjamin Wade,who was a radical Republican, speaker of the House, would have become president. And Wade was a true radical, I mean he was not just an advocate of black rights, he believed in women’s right to vote, which was fairly unusual at that time,he believed in labor rights.And the sense was that they were not too fond of Wade and they were not too fond of many of the radicals and this was one way for them to make sure that they would contain Johnson, but not have Wade as president.Jeremi: Right, right. So,in a certain way, and I think this is the way many historians write about this, it’s a way of asserting power for Congress keeping the president powerless rather than putting in a different president at that time.Manisha: Absolutely because Andrew Johnson is like a lame duck president after that, I mean he’s totally ineffective, but there’s one thing that Trumbull and Fessenden probably regretted is that he continues to oppose black citizenship and he’s eventually re-elected to the Senate where he continues his<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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obstructionist role of opposing Reconstruction and he eventually dies in 1875, but until his dying day he opposed black rights.Jeremi: Interesting, interesting. Zachary, you have another question?Zachary: Yeah, where was public opinionon this issue? Was there a sense of dissatisfaction with the result, or what was the public perception of this event?Manisha: Again, a very good question. Many Republicans in 1866,certainly,by that time,it was already evident that Johnson was not going to implement any of the Republican agenda,which was to have a Reconstruction in the South that would safeguard the rights of the newly freed slaves.And public opinion at that time was very much with Johnson’s opponents because most of these Southern states, with Johnson’s permission, had passed these black codes,which really did reduce African-Americans to a state of semi-servitude. So,in the North there was a real reaction to this and that’s how you get that super majority in both houses, just like the 2018 elections where the Democrats won over the House as,I think,somewhat of a reaction to what was happening, you had that in the North. So,public opinion in the North,certainly,was very much with Johnson’s critics, with his Republican opponents. In the South, black people and Southern white Unionists, who you would think were Johnson’s natural base because he was a Unionist, they opposed him,too. They were extremely upset that the president was pardoning traitors while he was ignoring them, so public opinion stayed actually against Johnson and throughoutthe impeachment process, too. This notion that somehow the radicals overreached by impeaching Johnson, a lot of that was written by revisionist historians of the Civil War who feltthat the war was not about slavery, it was about state’s rights and who bought into thewhole Lost Causemyth. AndUlysses Grant is elected with, again, a substantial majority in 1868 and again that’s a repudiation of Johnson and his policies. So,public opinion at that time, if you track it, we didn’t have any polls then so you can’t be very scientific about it, but if you read through the elections and newspapers, part of that newspapers that existed at that time, you could see that the Northern public opinion was very much against Johnson. In fact,he is booed at his rallies quite often, and when he is booed it’s not just people who support him, so yeah.Jeremi: Right. So,one of the questions, Manisha, that many of us ask as historians is why dowe not have another impeachment for more than a hundred years after this? Is it simply because there were no bad presidents, or is there a distaste,despite the continued anger toward Johnson, is there a distaste about doing this again? What is your senseof that?Manisha: You’re right, I mean we’ve had fallible presidents who have done somethings that don’t pass the smell test, you know? Politically and legally, I mean you think about Iran-Contra Scandal, those could be impeachable offenses you could think about. But it takes a lot to remove orimpeach a president, just from the impeachment process described in the Constitution. And usually,unless somebody is completely recreant to the oath of office, I think even their opponents in Congress have been reluctant to exercise this constitutional power. So,if you think about it, after Johnson it’s only Clinton, right? Who is impeached.Jeremi: Right, well Nixon comes close.Manisha: And before that Nixon resigned, yeah.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Jeremi: Yeah, right.Manisha: He resigned and he is cunning enough to resign before being subjected–because it was quite clear to Nixon that even members of his own party would vote for his impeachment, so that’s why resigned and he gets pardoned by Ford. Now that–what Nixon did was also areal criminal offense,which is to interfere in the elections, which is again the same thing that is–this is the same charge this time withTrump. With Clinton, he has a sexual relationship with a White House intern, which is clearly inappropriate but he–I think a lot of people at that time, both the public and people in Congress,felt that that was the real witch hunt, that that was not an impeachable offense. I mean Clinton’s approval rating was over 60%,nearly 70 from what I’ve heard,when Newt Gingrich and his Contract for America,or some people call it Contract on America, actually began those impeachments hearings. So,there was no public support for it at all, whatever we may think about Clinton’s offenses. With Trump, we have a far more serious scenario, I mean the criminality rises to the level of Nixon and theindecorous, the sort of clearly playing on racial divisions, inappropriate, lacking presidential demeanor is very similar to Johnson. So,I think Trump really combines all these aspectsof impeachment,which have been rare but that have occurred before in American history.Jeremi: Right, so that’s sort of where I was going with the question, do you think that the reason we go all the way from Andrew Johnson in 1868 to the impeachment inquiry of Nixon in 1973, more than a hundred years, is–we don’t have any impeachment inquiry even in that time, in that hundred years in between, is that because we didn’t have presidents who were as bad, or because–was one of the legacies of the Johnsonimpeachment that members of both parties wanted to avoid this nuclear option at almost all costs?Manisha: You know I think we really did not have a president who was openly criminal and then we had evidence of the criminality.Jeremi: I see.Manisha: Youknow maybe we did have presidents who did things, as I said, that did not pass the smell test but what Nixon did was so criminal, openly criminal. Today we had one of the Republican members recite a whole bunch of things from Lyndon Johnson to Lincoln to Obama and say,”All these are impeachable offenses then,” and he was just trying to muddy the water there.I really don’t think we’ve had that level of criminality until Nixon. You had a lot of people who had policies that were not appropriate and perhaps abused some of their Executive Powers, but impeachment is a high bar and I don’t think that anyone met that bar, and even before Johnson, the only other person over whom impeachment inquiry was actually initiated was John Tyler,who was also an accidental president, became president because William Henry Harrison died in office. Tyler was a pro-slavery zealot and he was being impeached because he was just not going along with his party’s policies also. That just kind of died out at the inquiry stage and then of course he was not in the presidential ticket or anything and Polk was elected. But what’s interesting about Tyler is that after that, he actually did commit treason against the United States. He voted for the succession of Virginia from the Union. So,he’s the only president who actually committed treason against the United States, interestinglyenough. So,I would think that those are the actions that meet the bar of impeachment. So I don’t think it was because people thought Johnson’s impeachment had failed, that became the narrative quickly, especially with the fall of Reconstruction,and you had people revising the history of the Civil War and seeing Reconstruction as this punitive Northern attempt to punish the South,that<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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people started buying into Johnson’s idea and Johnson clearly says that if you give black people rights, you are being unduly harsh on the white South. That kind of racist idea has become pretty entrenched as the national story of Reconstruction. But at that moment, people thought impeachment did what they wanted it to do, which was to damage Johnson so badly that even the Democrats didn’t want him in their presidential ticket.Jeremi: Right, right.Manisha: So,in that sense, in the short-term, it was successful just to get rid of Johnson. In the long-term, I do think that it is a remedy that is taken by Congress in very very egregious cases. It has to pass that Constitutional bar and I do think that Nixon, certainly not Clinton in my opinion, but Nixon and Trump and Johnson seem to meet a certain level of the kinds of things exactly what the founders warned against,Jeremi: Do you think it’s a problem–Manisha: The undermining of democracy.Jeremi: Do you thinkit’s a problem, Manisha, that no one’s ever been removed? I mean is that a–from a historian’s point of view, is that a positive feature of our system or a negative feature? Parliamentary systems, obviously, quite often have no confidence votes in a prime minister. Our founders didn’t want us to have that in the United States, but have we gone too far to the other extreme?Manisha: Well I don’t think so, after all the president does have to face an election every four years and now we have a system where after two terms they can’t stand for elections again. So,there is a way to get rid of a president, but I think that’s–impeachment is not just to get rid of the person, it is also to establish the rule that no person is above the law, that the president does not have the divine right to rule, that he is subject to the law also. So,despite what Attorney General William Barr has posited about unitary executive authority, thatsounds a lot like the divine right of kings was supposed to be,I think the impeachment process just to send a message, not just to the president, but to all office holders, to judges, to elected federal officials,that if you are involved with criminality and wrongdoing, there is a process to remove you and that is not just the election, that you would have to face the consequences of breaking the law, of being recreant to the oath of office, of upholding the United States Constitution. And in that sense, I think it is a useful thing, whether one removes the person from office or not. Nixon would clearly have been impeached in the vote. The votes were there, his own party was not behind him once the evidence came out, but he resigned. So,he was removed, but–so in that sense, also his impeachment inquiry was actually successful at getting rid of him, so you didn’t have a criminal in the White House anymore. And so,I think it’s good,in a way,that this is not an easy solution, on the other hand, it also depends on good faith,regardless of party,that we’d be able to judge the evidence in a case and uphold the Constitution,which is the oath that all members of Congress have to take. And I’m afraid that’s just not the case anymore, so I can actually predict that Trump will be let off in the Senate because you need atwo-thirdsmajority, there is a slight Republican majority. I can’t see any Republican Senator,so far,of actually breaking ranks and at this time, I mean,it’s sad to say that it’s no longer the grand old party of the Republic.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Jeremi: (laughs) So that might be the pointwhere we should turn,just briefly,to where we are today in the future and as you know we always like to close on a positive note. What are the positive things that citizens, particularly many of our listeners, can take from this moment? We can’t control,at least in the next few weeks, how members of the House and Senate will vote, but we’re all active citizens. What can we take from this process? How can impeachment, as it exists as a process,contribute to the strengthening of our democracy rather thanthe undermining of our democracy?Manisha: I have to say that as a naturalized citizen of the United States, I am in aweandso impressed with the way in which this proceeding has actually been conducted. You see upstanding national officers, foreign service officers, bureaucrats, law school professors, and they all explain very clearly why impeachment is important to check criminal behavior. And it could very well be that the positive outcome is that actually Trump does not get convicted in the Senate butthis acts as a check on him and his illegal behavior where he feels he can do all of this stuff with impunity. I am sure that after being impeached in the House, he will think twice before calling up a foreign leader and saying, “Do me a favor.” Or tryingto openly illicit foreign intervention in the United States election or any other kind of minor criminal behavior would seem–there’s so many that I don’t know where to begin. So,I think if nothing else, this might act as a check on Trump the way the impeachment proceedings acted as a check on Johnson. That it will–that Johnson realized that if he wanted not to be thrown out of office and impeached, become the first U.S. president to be impeached, that he would have to give that assurance that he wouldno longer interfere in Reconstruction and it hobbled him for the rest of his presidency. I am hoping that Trump will take that lesson, too. You never know what’s going to happen, but that’s my hope, that he realizes that you cannot behave with impunity, that there are checks and balances and that you would have to face the consequences of criminal and illegal behavior even if you are the president of the United States.Jeremi: Right. And I think that that has to be one of the key parts of the discussion, that this process of impeachment, this elaborate, complex process, like so many parts of our Constitution,exists as much to educate the public as it does to affect an outcome in our politics. And if members of the public today, as happened in the early 1970’s with the Nixon impeachment, are actually activated to think about issues and engage as they weren’t engaged before, I mean that is a democratic outcome, that’s an outcome that strengthens our democracy and that would be the hope coming out of that. Of course, the worry is that people are witnessing different realities depending on what news station they’re watching.Manisha: Absolutely, but you know even in Johnson’s case, there was a different reality being spun by Johnson, Northern Democrats,racists,and white Southern Former-Confederates.Jeremi: Sure.Manisha: Luckily,they lost.Jeremi: Right.Manisha: And you can never tell. Clearly,people are consuming their news in more and more partisan ways but I think any objective independent watching the hearings and looking at the ways in which the Republicans are trying to completely subvert the process or just make up stuff and say this–that can be fact checked in real time, I’m hoping that there are enough patriots amongst American citizens who will<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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be able to tell the truth. Like they say, you can lie to some of the people some of the time, but you can’t lie to all the people all the time.Jeremi: Right, and in addition you can also, by listening to the lies closely enough, sometimes you can actually find the truth.Manisha: Absolutely.Oddly enough, they have at times, unwittingly, in trying to claim impunity for all kinds of outrageous behavior,actually brought them to light.Jeremi: Yeah, exactly.Manisha: And that’s exactly how guilty people behave, so yeah.Jeremi: That’s right. Zachary, do you think that other young people like yourself are finding this an enlightening moment? Is this wonderful discussion and background that Manisha has given us, does it inspire young people, or does it just disillusion them?Zachary: Well, I actually think it’s very optimistic and very hopeful when so many young people are able to see these very vital processes of our democracy at work every day now. And also,I think it’s very powerful to see all the amazing civil servants in our government on stage and to see how much work and how much dedication these people put in every day and I think that really inspires a next generation of leaders.Jeremi: Right, right. And maybe,as Manisha has recounted in her scholarship and in her interview now, maybe just as the impeachment of Andrew Johnson does empower radical Republican Reconstruction efforts in the years after, maybe what we’re seeing today will empower more activism among young people and those who want to renew our democracy one way or another.Zachary: Definitely.Jeremi: Well thank you so much, Manisha, for your insights and sharing your time with us today.Manisha: Thank you! Thank you for having me and for those very good questions and I have to compliment Zachary for his poem, it was really good.Zachary: Thank you.Manisha: So, I was happy to follow you.Jeremi: (laughs) Well we were lucky to have you and Zachary on today and thank you to all of our listeners for joining us here where This is Democracy. Thank you.Narration: This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. The music in this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at HarrisonLemke.com. Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy.[00:40:21]<\/div>\n<\/div>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/17\/2021\/03\/This-Is-Democracy-Logo-TPN-Update-2021.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast-download\/1138\/ep-68-the-first-presidential-impeachment-lessons-and-legacies.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/this-is-democracy\/podcast-player\/1138\/ep-68-the-first-presidential-impeachment-lessons-and-legacies.mp3","audio_player":"