Censure Trump? What a Joke
June 7, 2019 in Economics
By Gene Healy
Gene Healy
With the Democratic base demanding action on the
Mueller Report and the House leadership gun-shy on impeachment, the
search is on for a viable alternative. A growing number of House Democrats think
congressional censure is that alternative. According to Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), censuring President
Trump will “send a clear message that the President’s
unethical and illegal conduct is wrong and hold him
accountable.”
The few successful
censure resolutions against sitting presidents have mostly faded
into obscurity.
The Democratic majority certainly has the power to pass a
sense-of-the-House resolution dressing down the president. That
move would be just as constitutional as Congress declaring it
“National Nurses’ Week” — and about as
effective.
Rep. Khanna touts censure as “a permanent mark on the
president’s record,” but history suggests it’s
more like a kid’s washable tattoo. The few successful censure
resolutions against sitting presidents have mostly faded into
obscurity.
Four presidents have been formally reprimanded by the House or
the Senate, according to the Congressional Research Service: Andrew
Jackson, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln and William Howard Taft.
For Lincoln and Taft, the resolutions were watered down by
amendment “so that they no longer clearly censured the
president.” Buchanan and Jackson received sharper scoldings,
but those episodes give us little reason to be impressed with
censure’s bite.
In 1860, as the secession crisis loomed, the House formally
rebuked President James Buchanan for awarding military contracts
based on “party relations,” a practice “dangerous
to the public safety and deserving the reproof of this
House.” The 15th president is widely considered one of
the nation’s worst, but few historians
remember the military patronage kerfuffle, and even fewer would put
that charge near the top of their list.
The Senate’s 1834 censure of Andrew Jackson over the
“Bank War” is somewhat better-known. By removing
federal deposits from the Bank of the United States and refusing to
provide a document demanded by the Senate, the resolution charged,
Jackson had “assumed upon himself authority and power not
conferred by the Constitution or the laws.” Not three years
later, a new Jacksonian majority in the upper chamber had the
measure expunged from the record.
Unless you’re a historical trivia buff, you probably
don’t remember these episodes. But most politically aware
Americans can name the two presidents who were impeached
— Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton — and the one who
resigned to avoid that fate, Richard Nixon. That ignominious
distinction is central to all three presidencies. And although
Johnson and Clinton avoided removal by the Senate, their legacies
were permanently scarred. Even if it fails to produce a conviction
in the Senate, impeachment by the House …read more
Source: OP-EDS
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