Our dubious Constitution (continued)

[Lynne Henderson]

Thank you Sandy , Mark, and Illya  for this interesting take.   I have  
to agree with Sandy, however, that impeachment is cumbersome and  
difficult, and with a second-term President, there is  little   
incentive for the President to pay attention to criticism, polls,  
whatever,  if he (or one hopes eventually she) so chooses--especially  
if the congressional majority is of the same party (*pace* those who  
have argued that the party system no longer has much meaning).
	While the impeachment trial of President Clinton would seem to prove  
David's point--that a President can be impeached whenever the House  
decides to vote articles--it remains extremely cumbersome and  
difficult, even when an opposition party controls one House if not  
both.  (No, I don't approve of the Lewinsky affair, yes I believe it  
was really, really stretching "high crimes and misdemeanors" to impeach  
Clinton and mostly based on vexation and spite)
	David,  I cannot for the life of me figure out why Carter "deserved"  
impeachment. Carter was in his first term, and he wasn't re-elected.   
He wasn't incompetent or idiotic;  he saw the issues, he just had some  
bad luck and a tin ear.   (Speaking of "deserving" impeachment--what  
about Reagan in the second term?  He ran up deficits as he had in  
California,  Iran-Contra is no minor matter, he may have been in the  
stages early Alzheimer's, etc. but just was too fearsome as a "Great  
Communicator" to take on? recall the LA Times held off on the Iran  
story because Reagan was "too popular")
	Votes of "no confidence" therefore have a special appeal, even if it  
doesn't "improve" the quality of the executive in parliamentary  
systems.  I don't think most of us know enough, however, to calibrate  
the competence, in domestic and foreign affairs, of the British and  
German PMs to know whether it has made a substantive difference in the  
quality of leadership or not.
	But surely our Constitution makes it too cumbersome to chastise a  
President, and it insulates second-term Presidents from any meaningful  
reprimand .  Perhaps the fix is to rid the Constitution of the two-term  
limit, to make sure whoever it is still has to face re-election and  
accountability to "the people."
             Respectfully,
                    Lynne


On Mar 16, 2006, at 5:02 PM, isomin at gmu.edu wrote:

> I'm not sure that impeachment is really all that rare.  Out of 43 US  
> presidents, 2 have been impeached (Johnson and Clinton) and one was  
> forced to resign for fear of impeachment (Nixon). At least 4 or 5  
> other presidents died early enough in their terms that there was  
> little opportunity to impeach even if people had wanted to do it.
>
> So some 8-10% of all US presidents who served a full term have either  
> been impeached or forced to resign to avoid it. That is a percentage  
> comparable to the percentage of British prime ministers or German  
> chancellors who have been forced to resign for similar reasons. French  
> presidents, by the way, are actually more difficult to remove during  
> their terms than American ones (and none ever has been, despite  
> considerable malfeasance in several cases).
>
> True, Clinton and Johnson remained in office thanks to the Senate, but  
> both ended up in very weak political positions.
>
> As compared to other major democracies, the US head of state doesn't  
> seem to be all that much more difficult to remove than is the norm.  
> Given the risk of false positives (removing good leaders when they  
> should be kept in place), I would hesitate to make impeachment too  
> much easier than it is now - this despite my considerable  
> dissatisfaction with President  Bush and his "big government  
> conservatism."
>
>
>
>
> Ilya Somin
> Assistant Professor of Law
> George Mason University School of Law
> 3301 Fairfax Dr.
> Arlington, VA 22201
> ph: 703-993-8069
> fax: 703-993-8202
> e-mail: isomin at gmu.edu
> Website: http://mason.gmu.edu/~isomin/
> The House can impeach the president any time it wants to, and the  
> Senate can convict.  It's only by custom that impeachment is so rarely  
> utilized.  We discussed this in my Con Law class this year, and most  
> students seemed to agree that there should be a lower threshold for  
> impeachment.  The fact that Jimmy Carter managed to stay president for  
> four years is enough evidence for me that the threshold should be  
> lowered.
>  
> In a message dated 3/16/2006 7:37:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
> Mark.Scarberry at pepperdine.edu writes:
>>
>> So I ask once more why it is such a great feature of our Constitution
>> that there is no way to get rid of a president deemed "incompetent,"  
>> an
>> "idiot," or a "liar" but what appears to be a majority of Americans?
>> (It simply does not make sense that "good" would represent a majority
>> response if the most frequent single response is "incompetent.") How
>> many of you, advising countries adopting new constitutions, would  
>> advise
>> that they take a leaf rom the US book and make it impossible to get  
>> rid
>> of a non-criminal president who is "merely" "imcompetent," an "idiot,"
>> or a "liar"? And if so, why?  I should note that I am impressed by  
>> some
>> recent literature suggesting that it might not make all that much a
>> difference whether a country goes the parliamentary or presidential
>> route.  And I have earlier conceded that there are, no doubt,
>> incompetent, idiotic, of mendacious prime ministers who exercise  
>> enough
>> control over their coalitions, by means fair or foul, to maintain
>> themselves in power.   
> David E. Bernstein
> Visiting Professor
> University of Michigan School of Law
> Professor
> George Mason University School of Law
> http://mason.gmu.edu/ 
> ~dbernste_______________________________________________
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