Anybody ready for another impeachment trial?
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, who represents most of the counties across the border from Chattanooga, has said she plans to introduce articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.
The Peach State congresswoman says the president should be removed from office due to his failure to secure the Southern border and because he has "deliberately compromised our national security by refusing to enforce immigration laws and secure our border."
Certainly, Biden can be heavily criticized for numerous things he has done, and left undone, since his 2021 inauguration. And he may pay for those failures by losing his re-election bid in 2024, but do we need to cheapen any further what used to be the rarely used method to remove the country's chief executive from office?
The country went through two politically motivated impeachment trials during the term of former President Donald Trump, and this would be another one of those.
Although Republicans now control the House of Representatives, and the House is charged with the power of impeachment, it has plenty of other priorities on its plate rather conducting a circus leading up potentially to removing a guy who by then would have about a year left in his term.
On top of that, there's also these terrifying words: President Kamala Harris.
Undoubtedly, many Trump-supporting Republicans would be down for a Biden impeachment as a tit-for-tat for the impeachment charges against Trump. But at least until 2025, an impeached Biden would have the same luxury Trump did in 2019 and 2021 and Bill Clinton did in 1999 — a Senate that would come nowhere near convicting him.
But back to the cheapening of impeachment in general by Greene. Here's a little secret. She's done it to Biden five times before, in fact for the first time the day after he was inaugurated, citing his abuse of power while he was vice president. Obviously, they all went nowhere.
And get this: Biden is the 10th president in the last 100 years (actually 91 years) either to be impeached, have a process to impeach started against him or to have resolutions of impeachment introduced or discussed. Since a resolution of impeachment was introduced against President Herbert Hoover in 1932, only five presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter have not been bothered by impeachment talk.
Until Clinton was impeached in 1998, House members felt only Andrew Johnson— 130 years before the man from Arkansas — deserved such an indignity.
However, before Hoover, Johnson wasn't the only one that individual House members thought needed an inquiry.
› Thomas Jefferson, our third president, got in Dutch with a congressman because he left a customs collector in office for too long and drew a resolution of impeachment about six weeks before the end of his second term in 1809. Though the House allowed consideration of the resolution, it was defeated 117-1.
› John Tyler, in office because of the death of William Henry Harrison, had a resolution filed against him in 1842 about the use of the presidential veto power. Ultimately, it was defeated 127-83. Earlier in his tenure, the House voted to accept a report on a similar subject implying that Tyler had committed impeachable offenses.
› James Buchanan was investigated by a House committee on suspicion of bribery and other allegations that would have risen to the level of impeachment, but the committee concluded the president's actions did not merit impeachment.
After Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant in 1876 and Grover Cleveland in 1896 also had resolutions that went nowhere filed against them.
But beginning with Hoover (two resolutions introduced), the parade began: Harry Truman (3), Johnson (1), Nixon (18, all dealing directly or indirectly with Watergate), Ronald Reagan (1, with an additional one proposed), George H.W. Bush (2), Clinton (1), George W. Bush (4 and others discussed), Obama (discussed), Trump (15) and Biden (9).
Following the political Clinton impeachment (and acquittal in the Senate) a result that was a foregone conclusion given that the majority Republicans didn't have close to two-thirds of the senators), Democrats abandoned the sacredness of the impeachment process in their measures against George W. Bush and Trump. And now Republicans have turned around and done the same against Biden.
Greene's newest measure is likely to go the route of her previous five, all of which were referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary to die. And such efforts don't help her already help her sullied reputation.
If the day ever came where Biden actually was charged with an impeachable offense (treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors), would Americans take it seriously? The unserious nature of such resolutions over the last 25 years makes us wonder.