The impeachment of a sitting President was uncharted territory. Given the somewhat ambiguous instructions in the Constitution, it is largely uncharted to this very day. It was successfully used to threaten Richard Nixon, who resigned from office to escape impeachment, and it was waged with partisan fury against William Jefferson Clinton. But the walls did not come tumbling down. For the framers of the Constitution considered that if impeachment removed the President from office, the office of the President—the presidency itself—would remain intact. That was their aim.
