After reading the wonderful editorial on impeachment in The Times the other day, I was prompted to seek out the Federalist Papers, but our library didn’t have a copy, nor did BookHampton, so I reached for Tocqueville. And here’s what he has to say on the subject, comparing European and American constitutions.
“In Europe . . . the sentence of a political tribunal is a judicial verdict rather than an administrative measure. . . . The main object of the political jurisdiction that obtains in the United States is . . . to take away the power from him who would make a bad use of it and to prevent him from ever acquiring it again.”
In other words, our legislators cannot assess criminal penalties when it comes to officeholders — death, say, for treason, as Trump recently hinted might be appropriate in the case of the anonymous “perfect call” leaker. (Though why, if the call was “perfect,” he would object to its being leaked, I don’t know.)
No, Tocqueville said when it came to impeachment that our federal Constitution, and some state constitutions, were mild in comparison with those of England and France, and though our Constitution was alarmingly vague when it came to impeachable offenses (“treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”), the broad language effectively subjected public functionaries in this country to “unlimited responsibility.”
Moreover, this milder procedure, he continued, would render its use more likely than in Europe, where “political tribunals are invested with terrible powers, which they are afraid to use. . . . But in America no one hesitates to inflict a penalty from which humanity does not recoil.”
Let’s forget whether what he did was criminal. Makes no difference in this country. Betrayal of the public trust by attempting to enlist the head of a foreign government in subverting our electoral process falls well within the high crimes and misdemeanors ballpark.
We — our representatives — should take away the power from him who has made bad use of it, and prevent him from ever acquiring it again.