To End a Presidency
Page 19
On the heels of the Civil War, the House impeached a president for the very first time. But the Johnson proceedings hardly invited a more open attitude toward ending presidencies. To the contrary, the failure of this impeachment—and the widespread perception over the following decades that it was unjustified—encouraged skepticism about any use of the impeachment power. Rather than make impeachment seem more plausible, the Johnson acquittal durably tarnished this constitutional check on the presidency.
From 1868 through 1951, politicians and public intellectuals almost never raised the threat of impeachment. When they did so, it was usually to inflict political damage on the president and his party rather than to force actual removal from office. Moreover, those efforts at strategic use of impeachment talk usually fell flat. It wasn’t until Harry Truman’s administration that impeachment suddenly—albeit temporarily—roared back to life in US national politics.
Before jumping to the 1950s, we’ll consider a handful of impeachment efforts in the long gap between Johnson and Truman. These examples offer a useful sense of impeachment’s comparatively minor role in this period. They also show different purposes to which the impeachment power was put during a time when it was practically unavailable.
Let’s begin with the presidential election of 1876. Eight months before Election Day, Democrats sensed opportunity. Republicans had held the White House since Abraham Lincoln replaced James Buchanan in 1861. But now Ulysses S. Grant was about to conclude his second term, and the nation had soured on Republicans and their Reconstruction program. In a foreboding twist, Democrats had scored crushing midterm victories two years earlier, bolstered by a weak economy and corruption in the executive branch. To Democrats’ delight, the air of scandal around Grant had only intensified since then, ensnaring key cabinet members—including the secretary of war, who resigned in disgrace after the House opened impeachment proceedings against him. As biographer Ron Chernow notes, “a perfect torrent of scandal had swept over the administration and Grant seemed powerless to stem the rushing, foaming tide.”16 By April 1876, the president was widely perceived as a solitary beacon of innocence in the White House.
To build momentum before the election, Democrats wanted to change that perception. At first, they pursued charges that Grant had broken the law by using public funds for his campaign in 1872. This claim broke down, however, when a key witness was revealed as certifiably insane. Undeterred, Democrats stumbled toward charges that Grant had spent too much time away from the capital. Seeking to substantiate this theory, they demanded that Grant account for his whereabouts since March 1869. Commentators treated this step as laden with overtones of impeachment, and political cartoonists mocked Democrats for their flimsy accusations. Grant’s response was suitably dismissive. The Constitution, he pointed out, nowhere empowers the House to make such a demand. Aware of the subtext, he added: “If this information be sought… in aid of the power of impeachment,” then it violated his own right not to be “made a witness against himself.”17
In fact, it isn’t clear whether the right against self-incrimination applies to the president in an impeachment proceeding. Moreover, as discussed in Chapter 2, a president who unjustifiably decides to absent himself for lengthy periods might well be guilty of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Nonetheless, Grant’s terse answer did the trick. Congressional Democrats’ halfhearted effort to precipitate an impeachment ended almost immediately. They ultimately let the question die when Congress reconvened in December 1876. By then, legislators had more pressing business: breaking a tie vote in the Electoral College that had unleashed political bedlam. (This was resolved by the infamous Compromise of 1877, which awarded the election to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for a promise to withdraw federal troops from the South and end Reconstruction.)
In Grant’s case, Democrats took barely a step in the direction of impeachment and gave up as soon as they hit resistance. They never had any serious intention of impeaching the president; they knew it, and Grant knew it. Their only goal was to make Grant look bad. They failed at that, too. All said and done, this was not an especially effective use of the impeachment power.
Yet the Democrats’ efforts to embarrass Grant were still far more productive than Congressman Milford Howard’s quixotic bid to impeach Grover Cleveland twenty years later. As a dedicated Alabama Populist, Howard vehemently disdained Cleveland, an establishment Democrat serving his second (nonconsecutive) term. Indeed, Howard disdained most American politicians, whom he saw as mere servants of the wealthy: “All the plutocrats have a perfect understanding among themselves… they care not whether the Democratic or Republican party wins, so long as both parties favor the money power.”18 On June 6, 1896, with only a few months left in Cleveland’s tenure, Howard filed an impeachment resolution. True to his populist roots, Howard charged Cleveland with mishandling federal bonds and funds, failing to enforce antitrust laws, corrupting politics, and deploying troops to crush the infamous Pullman Strike.
Howard’s colleagues had no patience for these political antics. His populist cri de coeur flashed, then fizzled, on the House floor. The Illustrated American remarked that “under many conditions [Howard’s call] would create a sensation in Congress,” but in this case “it seemed grotesque.”19 As soon as Howard finished reading his resolution, Representative Nelson Dingley Jr.—a Republican—raised a procedural objection. On a full vote, and without discussion, the House refused to consider the resolution on the merits. It was never seen again, and there is no evidence that Howard’s impeachment call had any notable effect.
In late 1919, Republicans took their turn at bat. Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, had just seen the nation through World War I. Determined to reshape the international order, Wilson personally headed the US delegation to a peace conference in Paris. This gathering redrew the world map, breaking empires and devising countries. Throughout the negotiations, Wilson pushed hard to form a League of Nations. He accurately foresaw that “there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.”20 In his view, the League of Nations was that method. It would resolve disputes, nurture cooperation, and avert conflict. While the Paris Peace Conference produced a deeply flawed treaty, it established a version of the League of Nations. Wilson therefore signed the agreement at Versailles on June 28, 1919.
In early July, Wilson returned home to a divided nation. Many Democrats supported him, but Republicans controlled the Senate. Fourteen members of that majority were especially hostile to the treaty and called themselves “Irreconcilables.” As historian George Herring recounts, they “launched a nationwide campaign, sending out thousands of pamphlets denouncing the ‘Evil Thing with a Holy Name’ and making hundreds of speeches, many of them appealing to the racial and nationalist prejudices of Americans.”21 The Irreconcilables were led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who once confided that he “never expected to hate anyone in politics with the hatred I feel towards Wilson.”22
To press his case with the public, Wilson embarked on a ten thousand–mile PR campaign. Not to be outdone, the Irreconcilables launched their own tour—which soon became a movable feast of impeachment talk. On September 11, 1919, Senator William Borah took the stage in Chicago and denounced Wilson’s plan to “hand American destiny over to the secret councils of Europe.” A furious crowd responded, “Impeach him!” and “Take the power out of his hands!”23 That scene repeated itself days later in Kansas City. When Senator Hiram Johnson warned that Wilson could not guarantee “secret treaties” with “the blood of American boys,” hundreds cried out, “Impeach Wilson!”24 These rallies weren’t isolated instances. The Congressional Record from 1919 and 1920 reveals a spike in citizen petitions urging the president’s impeachment.
These accounts of the anti-treaty movement reveal a rare display of mass, popular impeachment talk before the 1950s. If newspaper accounts are to be trusted, it was the crowds—not only the senators—who called for Wilson’s removal.
According to press reports, they feared America would “give back to George V what it took away from George III.”25
Although impeachment never seriously jeopardized Wilson’s presidency, that didn’t stop him from threatening those who supported it. This was wholly in character for Wilson, who had little respect for civil liberty. Citizens who called for impeachment at Republican rallies were generally safe. Promoting impeachment elsewhere, however, was risky—especially for political outliers. After Wilson returned from Versailles, the New York Times reported that the FBI had opened an investigation into a six-page petition urging Wilson’s impeachment. According to the Times, “these charges are so worded as to give comfort to the Bolsheviki, the pro-Germans, the Sinn Feiners, and to other elements that oppose… the League of Nations.” The FBI had already detained the pamphlet’s publisher and was now seeking its author “to determine whether or not the petition is a part of the enemy propaganda which has since the armistice gained new life in this country.” As part of that effort, “the names of the persons signed to such petitions as reach Washington will be investigated.”26 Looking back, Wilson’s conflation of impeachment with disloyalty was disgraceful. If a modern president tried to persecute citizens for supporting his removal, that position would constitute powerful evidence that he probably should be ousted.
As far as we can tell, the FBI investigation of Wilson’s critics ultimately came to naught. Ultimately, so did the president’s crusade for the League of Nations. In November 1919, after Wilson suffered a crippling stroke, his treaty was put to a vote. Wilson’s dream died that day on the Senate floor. Impeachment, though, had played only a bit part in its demise.
This isn’t to say impeachment never destroyed a political agenda. In December 1932, after Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected but before his inauguration, Representative Louis McFadden sought the impeachment of Herbert Hoover. McFadden was a repulsive anti-Semite. He was also a conspiracy theorist and radical foe of the Federal Reserve. Most of his colleagues found him entirely unbearable. In calling for Hoover’s removal, McFadden offered a bizarre grab bag of accusations, ranging from bad personnel decisions and mistreating protesters to increasing unemployment and usurping Congress’s role in treaty negotiation.
As the Washington Post reported, McFadden’s baseless resolution was “promptly and emphatically smothered… by a startled House of Representatives.” With no debate, the chamber voted to table McFadden’s motion by a vote of 361 to 8. House Republican leader Bertrand Snell deemed this “as hard a spanking as a grown man could get.” The eight votes in McFadden’s favor were met with loud hisses.27
McFadden suffered lasting consequences for submitting this baseless impeachment resolution. The Pennsylvania Republican delegation requested his resignation as its chair.28 Senator David Reed, a fellow Pennsylvania Republican, stated that “we intend to act [for] all practical purposes as though McFadden had died.”29 And back home, the Philadelphia Inquirer asked whether McFadden “belongs not in the House of Representatives but in some other institution.”30 McFadden never recovered from this blunder. In the 1934 election, he was defeated by a Democrat—the only time between 1912 and 1950 that his district didn’t vote Republican. He then tried to run for president on an avowedly anti-Jewish platform, but that effort went nowhere. In 1936, exiled from national politics, McFadden died at the age of 60.
The stories recounted in this section are fairly representative of the limited role that impeachment played from 1868 to 1951. If anything, they overstate it, since we sought out those unusual cases where the word impeachment was mentioned in national political disputes. This period thus marked the long slumber of the impeachment power in American life and politics.
In 1951, after a century of near-total inactivity, the nation experienced a wave of impeachment fever exponentially more intense than anything since Johnson. A second wave followed one year later, this time accompanied by impeachment resolutions in the House. Each bout of impeachment talk lasted only a couple of months, and neither produced durable public interest in presidential impeachment. In fact, that subject largely disappeared from public discourse from 1952 until 1974. Nonetheless, it’s under Truman—a Democrat—that we can first locate a harbinger of the popular, partisan impeachment dynamic that now shapes our politics.
The first round of impeachment talk occurred in April 1951, after Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of command during the Korean War. MacArthur was flamboyant, egotistical, and mercurial. He was also a national hero and occasional genius. The combination of these traits led him to defy the rule that civilians, not generals, control our military and foreign policy. Although hugely unpopular at the time, Truman’s decision to fire MacArthur is now recognized as a vindication of the Constitution. In a fine display of irony, his contemporaries rewarded him not with praise, but with impassioned calls for his removal.
This chain of events began in September 1950. After US troops were deployed to South Korea, they struggled to establish and hold a position. When all seemed lost, MacArthur saved the day by launching an amphibious assault at Inchon, deep behind enemy lines. MacArthur recaptured Seoul and then advanced past the 38th Parallel, which divided Korea as part of the settlement of World War II. Assuring Truman that he would “get the boys home by Christmas,” MacArthur split his forces in late November and pushed to the Yalu River, which borders China.31 That’s when things fell apart. MacArthur had severely underestimated the strength and motivation of Chinese forces. On November 25, several hundred thousand Chinese troops attacked the US army, inflicting heavy casualties. MacArthur was forced to undertake a chaotic and embarrassing retreat to South Korea in subzero weather. It wasn’t until General Matthew Ridgway arrived weeks later that US soldiers rallied.
At this fateful juncture, Truman and MacArthur reached a breaking point. The president wanted a limited war to stabilize the 38th Parallel and avoid a broader conflagration. MacArthur had grown obsessed with expanding the battlefield into China. Over time, their positions drifted further apart. Truman had no interest in starting World War III, while MacArthur fantasized about a grand struggle in the Far East that would forever obliterate communism.
Unwilling to limit his martial ambition, MacArthur railed against Truman and his advisors at the State Department. In public interviews, he accused them of appeasement, incompetence, and stupidity. MacArthur kept up his criticism even after Truman ordered all military commanders to use “extreme caution in public statements.”32 Then, in March 1951, MacArthur deliberately sabotaged Truman’s effort to negotiate a cease-fire with China and North Korea. As Truman later concluded, his general had acted “in open defiance of my orders as President and as Commander in Chief.”33 Yet Truman responded only with a stronger gag order. This was his final effort to restrain MacArthur.
Secure in his own hubris and shielded by a wall of public support, MacArthur refused to stand down. People loved his message of American power and were dazzled by his military demeanor. His famous triumphs in World War II reminded them of total victory. Truman, in contrast, seemed weak and ineffectual. With his approval ratings barely clearing 25 percent, the president held a precarious position.
But at last the general went too far. On April 5, 1951, House Republican leader Joseph Martin took the floor and read a private letter in which MacArthur excoriated Truman’s oversight of the Korean War. MacArthur’s meddling in politics was inexcusable. Further, Truman’s advisors believed that MacArthur’s strategy “would involve us in the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”34 After consulting with the secretaries of state and defense, and with support from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Truman relieved MacArthur of his command. That way, he publicly explained, “there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.”35
Truman’s announcement went off like a grenade. As historian David McCullough writes, “Truman had known he would have to face a storm, but however dark his premonitions, he could not
possibly have measured what was coming.”36 Within forty-eight hours, more than two hundred thousand telegrams flooded the White House and Congress—many of them calling for impeachment. “IMPEACH THE IMBECILE” and “IMPEACH THE LITTLE WARD POLITICIAN FROM KANSAS CITY” were typical. Cars were plastered with signs and stickers reading, “Oust President Truman.” The president was burned in effigy and damned as a traitor. Several state legislatures formally condemned him. Across the nation, flags were flown upside down and at half-mast. Petitions demanding Truman’s removal circulated widely. The Chicago Tribune even ran a front-page editorial entitled “Impeach Truman.” Blasting the president, it concluded: “The American nation has never been in greater danger. It is led by a fool who is surrounded by knaves. Impeachment is the only remedy.”37
Meanwhile, the full Republican leadership in Congress met to discuss impeachment. House Minority Leader Joseph Martin made clear that he didn’t plan to stop with Truman: “We might want the impeachments of 1 or 50.”38 In the Senate, Republican William E. Jenner thundered that “this country today is in the hands of a secret inner coterie which is directed by agents of the Soviet Union.” “Our only choice,” he implored, “is to impeach President Truman and find out who is the secret invisible government which has so cleverly led our country down the road to destruction.”39
National outrage burned even brighter when MacArthur arrived home the next week. He was met at the airport by a crowd of ten thousand. More than 30 million Americans then watched his spellbinding address to a joint session of Congress on April 19, 1951. Millions turned out in New York City for a parade in his honor, and MacArthur was overwhelmed with invitations from every corner of the country. All the while, the general’s adoring fans seethed at Truman and urged impeachment.