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As the Democrats’ impeachment efforts against President Trump continue to blow up in their faces (which is not to say they won’t succeed, given the establishment media’s indefatigable attempts to put a good face on the proceedings), it is useful to recall that we have been here before. No impeachment proceeding against a president has ever been as baseless, vindictive, and politically motivated as the one against Trump now, but the impeachment of Andrew Johnson comes close.
Johnson became president when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and his troubles began almost immediate. Lincoln was a Republican, and the Republicans had majorities in Congress, but Johnson was a Democrat. It was curious, to say the least, to have a Republican president running for reelection with a Democratic vice presidential candidate, but in the political calculus of that tumultuous time, it made perfect sense. Worried about carrying the border states that had remained, albeit precariously, in the Union during the Civil War, the Republicans formed the National Union Party, which was meant to be a big-tent party comprising Republicans and Democrats who wanted to preserve the Union. Johnson’s vice-presidential candidacy was a bid for the votes of Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware in an election that most thought would be extremely close.
There is much more.
mortimer says
Very good comparison by Robert Spencer. Recently, I reread the storm revolving around Johnson and it seems that the flimsiness of the issues cited were as paper-thin as those being brought against President Trump. The trial of President Andrew Johnson always seemed suspicious and unconvincing to me. The pseudo-trial of President Trump is similarly without any merit. It’s hogwash and history will condemn the undisguised, unscrupulous partisanship of the accusers. A president should not be impeached for
Surely, the American people deserve a congress that will do something useful for them. This witch-hunt in search of a crime is a colossal waste of money and time.
Wellington says
For the record, mortimer, eight of the eleven articles of impeachment against President Andrew Johnson were because he violated the Tenure of Office Act, which act was itself repealed in 1887 by Congress and in 1926 the Supreme Court cast grave objections to this restriction of the Executive in the first place.
As for the other three articles of impeachment, one was for violating the Command of the Army Act, which itself was highly dubious since it infringed upon a President’s right to be completely and totally Commander-in-Chief of the American Armed Forces. As for the other two articles, they were so vague and clearly violative of the First Amendment freedom of speech provision, that they were quite arguably bogus too. These last two articles actually accused Johnson of, mon Dieu, the grave sin of criticizing certain members of Congress like Thaddeus Stevens. Oh the humanity!
I am not necessarily defending Andrew Johnson, though I think much pc/mc rot surrounds current assessments of him. Like almost all whites of his era (including Abraham Lincoln), he thought blacks inferior to whites. I don’t agree with this but to single out Andrew Johnson for special opprobrium is to be highly selective to the point of hypocrisy.
Besides, Johnson actually encouraged white Southerners, as did Lincoln, to provide the voting franchise to some blacks, something the vast majority of whites didn’t want at all. Indeed, and this is why, understandably, many Southerners to this day consider the 19th-century North a hypocrite because free states like Iowa and Oregon did not only deny the franchise to black Americans but actually forbade free blacks from entering their state.
As usual, the entire panoply of matters is far more complicated than ordinarily presented—other examples being that, per the 1830 census, some 4,000 free blacks owned some 13,000 black slaves, especially in North and South Carolina, and that the Five Civilized Tribes (Choctaw, Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw and Seminole) in what is now Oklahoma sided with the Confederacy in large part to preserve their black slave system. Indeed, the last Confederate General to surrender to Union troops some ten weeks after General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox was General Stand Watie, himself a Cherokee chieftain.
I fight often times Napoleon’s cynical view of the past, to wit, that history is a pack of lies agreed upon, but when I witness the current farce since 2016 when Trump was elected to oust him by any means (first the Russian collusion hoax and now the Ukrainian quid pro quo hoax), I am inclined to side with the Emperor in his assessment. A total low-life like Adam Schiff only adds further credibility to what the Corsican asserted some two hundred years ago.
Sorry to go on so long, but sometimes the truth is in the details. As here I would contend.
As always, I welcome your astute and informed assessments of the religious disaster which is the Islamic faith. Take care.
somehistory says
Wellington,
Thank you for the history lesson in miniature. As a person born in the South of parents and grand, born in the South, I do think it was hypocritical of those in the North who demanded slaves be set free when they kept people enslaved. There was evil behind it.
Several years ago, a friend of mine, a very nice Black lady school teacher, who had moved to the South after having been born and raised and lived into adulthood in the North, were discussing many things one day and she told me how much better the people in the South treated her than those in the North. She had faced a lot of discrimination and found that it was much less down here.
Some people get strange ideas from their parents or grand, and some get them as they get older and make friends with those who think differently. Ideas about things one does not understand can sure gum up the works.
Wellington says
Thanks for your comment, somehistory.
I have traveled all over the North and South visiting Civil War battlefields and my own experience doing so, plus being a Northerner from birth, has led me to conclude that the further South one travels the better black/white relations are (and more subtle too) and the further into the North one goes the worse black/white relations are.
So many times the conventional and received wisdom is dead wrong. What I just wrote and what you narrated about that black woman only tends to confirm this contention.
Hope you are doing well. Happy Thanksgiving, and the further North you are, e.g., Maine, it is more likely to be Indigenous Persons’ Day, never mind the fact that American Indians were often highly brutal to one another and to whites and enslaved both, just as whites did the same to them—but only those from Western Civilization did wrong. American Indians were wonderful. Muslims too. Only the West was awful.
Yes, this is the utter double standard we live with today and which young folks are being indoctrinated with. Goofy world.
somehistory says
Wellington
Thank you. I’m about as South as one can get. My family has always gotten along with Blacks and others. I live in a mostly Black neighborhood, but am shown respect by most all of the people living around me. They accept me for who I am and I them.
Some have shared their food, and most have shared their laughter.
Happy day of Thanksgiving to you. Writing that just now brought Sergeant Detrieck (sp?) of Barney Miller, to mind. I recall my mother’s kitchen at this time of year always had a lot of food for anyone who came by. Her ancestry included some from the “Native American” part of the human family. Oh, if only everyone could just be nice to each other.
But, the world is a ‘goofy’ place, as you say.
Kepha says
@Wellington, Somehistory, Mortimer–
Read your interchange with a great deal of interest. Lat year, my wife and I drove to Alabama to visit her former English teacher, who was dying of cancer. One thing I discovered in the Deep South was that people, whether black or white, really are more mannerly and hospitable.
I hold no candle for slavery or Jim Crow, and am humbly grateful that my country has done much to overcome this blot in our history, and pray for a continuing reconciliation and improvement of relations between our varied demographics (including acceptance of how more and more of us are “multiracial” according to our five-flavor color chart, and thus are born knowing they have a vested interest in good “racial” relations.
The current impeachment brouhaha also stinks of Beria infamous “Give me the man, and I’ll give you the crime.” While I am a Never Trump Republican who bit his tongue and held his nose to vote for him (I find Trump boorish, intemperate, a gamer of the system, and a womanizer), the “high crime and misdemeanor” of which he is guilty seems to be that he beat Hillary Clinton (herself no paragon of virtue) in an election rigged in Mrs. Clinton’s favor. In doing so, he made the self-appointed “smartest people in the room” look pretty durn foolish, and such people don’t appreciate that. Hence the attempted coup attempt.
You guys ought to read Diplomad 2.0 (a blog by a former foreign service officer). It now nad then has some interesting tidbits on how “swampy” our bureaucratic culture truly is. It will be a chilly day in Hell before I vote for a Democrat, seems how they are trying very hard to deny First Amendment (as well as Second Amendment) rights to people like me. Hopefully, if Trump wins in 2020, he can actually get to work on firing a lot of people at Justice, CIA, NSA, Pentagon, and elsewhere. Hoepfully the electorate will vote out a lot of the Democrats on the Hill as well.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Kepha. I noted that there was a drumbeat to impeach Trump before he even took office. First it was the Muller Report, now that is forgotten, and the main “argument” seems to be Trump should be impeached because he has resisted impeachment…
mortimer says
Thanks to Wellington for a superbly written history lesson. The devil is often in the details. You have convinced me that what Johnson went through was largely partisan, since the issues were very ambiguous and the legal levers to remove him were later removed by congress.
Dapto says
They have become the Democratic Nazi party and intend to send all deplorables to concentration camps
Herz says
Democratic Party as in the People’s Democratic Republic of [North] Korea
Infidel says
The president does have a clear right to make a completely new foreign (and for that matter, any) policy. It’s not the role of bureaucrats to make policy: it’s their role to implement what the president decrees. Yeah, you could have congress put limits on what a president can or can’t do, but not the bureaucrats.
How would the Dems have liked it had Republicans tried to impeach Obama over the Iran deal? Much as we hated it, constitutionally, Obama had every right to sign that stupid deal (and Trump had every right to pull out of it). But had the State Department tried to sabotage it, they’d have been well meaning, but wrong!
It’s the same thing w/ Russia and Ukraine. Every opponent of Trump in the primaries (except perhaps Rand Paul and Ben Carson) opposed his stance on Russia, but every one of them were soundly trounced! Same w/ Hillary. Now maybe voters wanted normalized relations w/ Russia, or maybe they didn’t care what US policy would be on Moscow. However, since they did vote for Trump, he got the mandate to do what he wanted on Russia. Yet, the bureaucracy started working immediately to get Flynn fired and later ruined, and then the Mueller witch hunt. In the process, proving all the Libertarian doubting Thomases on the FISA law absolutely right! I supported those laws when they were passed, believing that they’d be used to fight Jihadists abroad. But w/ the abuse that’s gone on in probing innocent citizens like Carter Page, George Papadopaulos and who knows who else, I’m w/ Rand Paul and others who’d like to see this law repealed. Since the Dems have proven that they’d misuse this law if it remained on the books
At any rate, the parade of bureaucrats that we saw this week just convinced me that ALL of them should have been fired the day Trump took office. Leave him w/ the onus of filling those departments w/ whoever he finds suitable
Wellington says
For the constitutional and legal record, Infidel, I think it easily arguable that Obama unconstitutionally passed off that stupid and craven Iran nuclear deal as an executive order or some such thing rather than, as he clearly should have, submitted it to the Senate as a treaty, which it surely was and thus would have required a two thirds majority which Obama wouldn’t have come even close to getting, probably not even a simply majority.
Conclusion: Obama violated the treaty provision of the Constitution. Meanwhile, the Democrats want to impeach Trump over a phone call and all the while not caring a whit about what Vice-President Biden did for his son, Hunter, who had no expertise with either Ukraine or natural gas but nonetheless got $83,500 per month for being on the board of Burisma, which corrupt Ukrainian company was being investigated by a Ukrainian prosecutor that Vice-President Biden demanded be fired within six hours or no billion dollars to Ukraine from the US.
Oh yeah, no quid pro quo here at all. Nothing to see, folks. Just move on and focus on that terrible, impeachable phone call by Trump.
Phony world. Big time.
Infidel says
The thing I don’t get is – instead of urging Trump to keep the treaty, why didn’t the Dems try to ratify it in the senate, maybe attempting to get some GOP support? There’s no way Trump could have kept it w/o senate ratification at some point.
It’s the same thing w/ the DACA law: what Obama did was clearly unconstitutional, and Trump let it lapse, but some federal judge in Podunk kept it alive until SCOTUS decides to look at it. Leaving in limbo a question that all parties want an answer to – be it ICE, the dreamers and everybody else
Trump needs solid allies in both houses, given the opposition: in other words, more seats in the Senate so that Collins, Murkowski and Romney are rendered irrelevant, as are the softies like Lindsay Graham and Rob Portman. I’d like to see a Bannon driven grassroots campaign that sees more and more GOPe people lose their seats to grassroots MAGA/KAG activists: as Bannon put it to Candace Owens, we need our own AOCs
gravenimage says
The Democrats’ Current Farce Isn’t the First Impeachment Witch Hunt
…………………………..
I knew we were going to go through this farce as soon as President Trump was elected. New York Magazine’s January 2017 issue was already pushing impeachment, even though he had not even taken office yet. Hard-Left Democrats have been trying to gin something up ever since. It is just absurd.
Willie Brown–California pol turned pundit–acknowledged a few days ago that hardly anyone was watching the impeachment hearings, and was musing on ways to make them ‘more exciting’. How ridiculous is this?
somehistory says
On that silly sow, The View, whoopie was talking impeachment before Mr. Trump took office. She denied it not long ago, but there is video evidence of her saying it.
And r. tliab was caught using some vulgarities calling for him to be impeached. It was in the works as a plan, just in case h. clinton lost…which they didn’t think would happen. But those two FBI agents..one a woman…a ‘dating’ couple, were saying they had a ‘plan’ just in case the unthinkable happened and Mr. Trump won.
Angemon says
Dems need impeachment because they have no one who can beat Trump fairly.
George says
the dems should take a chill pill and go home and count their money as besides their ludicrous salaries, bribes, lobbyist payments, investments in corrupt companies they and their families own, should have more than enough money to last them throughout their lifetime and the lifetime of their heirs.
so get out of the picture and let true Americans lead our country which would not be any democrat on the planet.
corruption is rampant and obama’s bunch got by with murder, literally, look at the clinton’s. how are they surviving without the ‘foundation’????
theorioninitiative says
Was there also foreign influence behind the Johnson’s impeachment? Clearly with Trump’s there is. Ukraine in my view is a struggle between Russia and the EU, clearly the EU would like Trump gone as well as any nationalist movement within Europe. Fiona Hill, a member of the Eurasia Foundation seemed to have parroted Timothy Snyder’s views from Yale who again in my opinion places the EU empire above all else. I would not be surprised if this was the main force behind the pre-election impeachment talk. In their minds Trump has inspired the sovereign nation movement.
underbed cat says
The Ukraine issue attracted my attention during a time after a letter from Putin was published, I believe in the Wall Street Journal, about uniting to fight Islamic terrorism with the United States, this was published after the attacks in Benghazi I think. The letter featured a bloody handprint. Obama was in office, and apparently had not responded and then later there was a Boston Marathon tragedy, later learning about the men who arrived, chechen, Putin claim he warned the national security. Fast forward to Ukraine. Russia takes Crimea, claiming it, Russia had a military base on the Black Sea. Googled Crimea and found a large population of Tartars, or muslims in area. Maybe not a bad idea. Then I read that some one was spotted in the crowd during and after an election who came from the U.S CIA. This I read in RT news that was online and it took me a while to understand it was a Russian news source. The news reports out of Crimea and Ukraine showed riots in the streets and it escalated, some were unhappy with the new President.The interviews of people showed they were frightened and one woman in particular interviewed said she wished Russian would intervene. But everything I have heard since calls Russia the aggressor. I remember thinking what it would be like to live under such fear. That news faded and the news now centered on Assad. Something I listened to interviews and heard he was trying to protect civilians against aggression. This went on for years and isis was the aggressor, others claimed it was Assad, it seemed horrible. But as the war continued and aid was being transported that was attacked by error. No expert, but curious since during the 1990’s Russians started coming to my town and they found jobs, later at work I briefly met a woman in health company pharma companies. They also came from China. I met a woman who husband worked on a military base. O.K. that was weird. Thinking back I think the coup against the U.S. started long ago,but the one idea that stuck is that Russia suffered terror attacks but is known for past Soviet aggressions….but yet speaking to one Russian he saw an enemy that has only lately has been revealed. The Global islamic movement, maintained with open borders and apparently some who exclude it’s existance and intrinsic nature, but seemed to be threatened by a strong President that fills the news….and hopefully this lastest coup will not succeed in aiding our enemy and the loss of our freedoms for me the freedom of speech.
Wellington says
underbed cat: While I certainly think the Russians have some points of view that should be listened to, and that Ukraine is as corrupt a nation as Russia (maybe even more so), the way Crimea was annexed went against all norms of international law. Imagine if Mexico were a great power (OK, stop laughing) and some twenty of the 254 counties of Texas, those right along or close to the border with Mexico, voted to become part of Mexico again (just as Crimea was part of Russia until 1954), and Mexico annexed them. How legitimate would this be? Same as with Crimea.
Also, Putin has sucked up to Muslims many times over, as examples, celebrating the opening of the largest mosque in Moscow and allowing Sharia in Chechnya. As usual, geopolitics are byzantine and do not lend to an easy good/bad assessment.
I’m not necessarily opposing all you said, but I thought I would add this perspective. Best to you and yours.
gravenimage says
Agreed, Wellington.