The power of impeachment provides a unique window onto the American republic. It helps to define American exceptionalism. In the eighteenth century or the twenty-first, no large nation can flourish without some kind of executive authority. For Hamilton’s reasons, that authority needs to be powerful. At the same time, the executive is, by far, the most dangerous of the three branches, because it can do so much, for better or for ill, in such a short time.
