Is Newt Gingrich's Rise the Impeachers Path to Political Success?
Thirteen years ago today, President Bill Clinton was impeached. He had an affair with an intern and lied about it. At the heart of the charge against Clinton was then-Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, who is now considered a favorite for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination.
It has several political commentators wondering if Gingrich's success will be driven by the notoriety that he gained during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Impeachments aren't every day occurrences, but each time they've happened to a president, one lawmaker has found a way to use it for his own political gain. Now, it's time to see if it's Gingrich's turn.
The modern impeachment process in the U.S. political system has its roots in British government. Though officials aren't necessarily charged with crimes if impeached, they were ways to keep powerful lords and barons in check. To date, the U.S. Senate has conducted formal impeachment proceedings 19 times, according to the the federal government, resulting in 7 acquittals, 8 convictions, 3 dismissals and one resignation with no further action. Impeachments are usually directed at judges and senators, but twice has a sitting president been impeached.
The first presidential impeachment occurred as the Civil War ended. President Andrew Johnson was in the midst of a political feud with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. He tried to have him removed and replaced with war hero Ulysses S. Grant, but Stanton was a member of the increasingly influential Radical Republicans that fought Johnson's attempts. Radical Republicans were the driving force behind Reconstruction after the Civil War, and were led by a club-footed Pennsylvanian named Thaddeus Stevens.
(Image of Thaddeus Stevens courtesy of Flickr.)
Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868 but fell one vote short of being removed from office by the Senate. Nonetheless, the impeachment process solidified Steven's standing in Capitol Hill, and he remained one of the most powerful representatives in Congress until he died. Hans Louis Trefousse referred to Stevens as the "dictator of Congress" in 1997 biography of the politician.
In the last century, Gerald Ford helped define the modern criterion for impeachment by vaguely asserting that "an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." Four years later, Gerald Ford would become president when President Richard Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment.
(President Ford in the Oval Office. Image courtesy of Flickr.)
Earlier today, Michael Crowley at TIME Magazine wrote that Democrats and Republicans want to let sleeping dogs lie, but perhaps no one is more motivated than Gingrich himself.
"Driving Clinton from office for lying about his affair with Monica Lewinsky had the makings of an epic victory that would have made Gingrich, then Speaker of the House, a Republican superhero," Crowley wrote. "But Gingrich badly misread the politics and wound up losing his own job instead. Later, after he was long gone from Congress, Gingrich would lose something less tangible, after he admitted to an extramarital affair of his own."
With the fallout that Gingrich experienced after the impeachment, it's hard to tell if his history will help or impede him.
“I don’t think there’s any appetite for it,” former senior Clinton White House adviser Don Baer told TIME, referring to the Clinton scandal. “I think the country has moved on.”
If Gingrich’s campaign can sustain the momentum it picked up in December, the American public will see if he'll follow the path of his fellow impeachers. Or, we'll see if Baer is right and Clinton's sex life is indeed a thing of the past.
(Lead image of Newt Gingrich at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans courtesy of Flickr.)
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