Impeachment: An American History

by Jeffrey A. Engel

Morris’s call for specificity prompted the most illuminative aspect of the entire debate for our contemporary purposes. Initial language for an impeachment clause had employed the word “malpractice” to describe a president whose actions proved himself unfit, yet the term and the synonym delegates subsequently employed more often, “maladministration,” offered significant space for interpretation and thus for legislative chicanery. If Congress could remove a president merely by judging his performance poor, a purely subjective metric, any president they did not enjoy or even like, even the most competent, could be ejected at their whim. Madison therefore offered a more precise list. A president “might lose his capacity after his appointment,” he suggested, or “might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression.” (An unusual word to modern ears, “peculation” described the embezzlement of public funds.) A despicable soul might even succumb to bribes while in office, or, worse yet, Madison added, “betray his trust to foreign powers.” Any such corruption or loss of capacity would provide reason enough to impeach, Madison argued. “Either of them might prove fatal to the republic.”52