[george3383]

>Impeachment is in the constitution for a reason. Winning an election is not a sufficient condition for maintaining a public office. So on face, there's nothing actually wrong with trying to use a constitutional tool to kick out an elected official.

Doesn't the fact that there has been a push to get all the presidents kicked out mean there's something really wrong?

[dragonwriter]

> Doesn't the fact that there has been a push to get all the presidents kicked out mean there's something really wrong?

Not especially, given that the “push” in the activist base hasn't procedurally gone very far in most cases. You'd find very few democracies where some members of the opposition (especially in the electorate) don't claim that any given leader’s behavior is unacceptable and should result in removal.

I mean, I think something did go wrong—Ford’s pardon of Nixon which was essentially justified by the argument that prosecuting a President would be too much for the nation to deal with—which has encouraged subsequent President's to view violating legal and Constitutional constraints on the power of the Presidency as safe because they are, in a sense, “too big to fail”.

But I while I think that has manifested in an increase in Presidential limit-pushing at least from Reagan on, I don't think that impeachment discussions are particularly a system if a deep political dysfunction.

[throwawayjava]

I think the question you ask should be re-stated in terms of magnitudes. I expect every president has had ardent opponents who want him impeached. The question is whether the mainstream component of the opposition party takes that desire seriously.