1. For “liberal pundits” and “ominous thing,” see Nicole Hemmer, “A Forgotten Lesson of Watergate: Conservatives May Rally Around Trump,” Vox, May 17, 2017.
2. Ben Stein, “The Truth About Nixon,” CNN.com, June 16, 2015.
3. Lydia Saad, “Americans’ Faith in Government Shaken But Not Shattered by Watergate,” Gallup News Service, June 19, 1997, https://news.gallup.com/poll/4378/americans-faith-government-shaken-shattered-watergate.aspx. For more recent analysis and polling data, see Pew Research Center, “Beyond Distrust: How Americans View Their Government,” November 23, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-americans-view-their-government.
4. Pew Research Center, “Beyond Distrust.”
5. Jessica Kwong, “Bill Clinton Is a Sexual Predator, Not a Victim, Most Americans Say in New Poll,” Newsweek, June 11, 2018.
6. For “boring,” see Nolan McCaskill, “Trump: Acting More Presidential Would Be ‘Boring as Hell,’ ” Politico, April 4, 2016. For “Lincoln,” see “Trump: ‘I can be more presidential than all U.S. Presidents except Lincoln,’ ” The Washington Post, July 25, 2017.
7. Linda Qiu, “Did Trump Fire Comey over the Russian Investigation or Not?” The New York Times, May 31, 2018.
8. Mallory Shelbourne, “Support for Trump Impeachment Hearings at 41 Percent in New Poll,” The Hill, December 20, 2017. See also Sam Schwarz, “Support for Donald Trump’s Impeachment Is Higher Than His Re-Election Chances,” Newsweek, December 20, 2017.
9. Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman, “Shifting Strategies, Trump’s Lawyers Set New Conditions for Mueller Interview,” The New York Times, July 6, 2018. For comparisons of public support, see Matt Ford, “How Not to Remove a President,” The New Republic, April 16, 2018.
10. Cristiano Lima, “Pelosi: Impeaching Trump ‘Not Someplace That I Think We Should Go,’ ” Politico, November 5, 2017.
11. For “up or down,” see Elizabeth Brown-Kaiser and Will Parsons, “Midterm Elections Are an ‘Up or Down Vote’ on Impeaching Trump, Says Bannon,” ABC News, June 17, 2018. For “keep the House,” see Morgan Gstalter, “Trump: If Dems Win in 2018 Midterms, They Will Impeach Me,” The Hill, April 28, 2018.
1. For “losing all confidence,” see Henry D. Gilpin, ed., The Papers of James Madison (Washington: Library of Congress, 1841), 2:640. For Madison’s critical role as our primary resource for the Constitutional Convention’s debates, see Mary Sarah Bilder, Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015).
2. “Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratification Convention, June 5, 1788,” in The Complete Anti-Federalist, ed. Herbert J. Storing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 225.
3. “Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention,” June 2, 1787, Avalon Project, Yale Law School Lillian Goldman Law Library, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_602.asp. Hereafter “Madison’s Notes.”
4. For Kennedy, see “Excerpts from Supreme Court Decision Striking Down Sodomy Law,” The New York Times, June 27, 2003. For Scalia, see Alan Dershowitz, “Scalia Speaks,” The New York Times, October 30, 2017.
5. For useful discussions from our own age of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” see Raoul Berger, Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973); Michael Gerhardt, The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); Cass R. Sunstein, Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017); and Lawrence Tribe and Joshua Matz, To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment (New York: Basic Books, 2018).
6. The period’s gendered presumptions offend twenty-first-century sensibilities, and I look forward to one day expanding the range of pronouns employed to discuss American presidents. Yet I have hereafter retained masculine pronouns whenever discussing the Constitution’s framers’ conception of a future president, whom they could no more imagine being a woman than an enslaved African American, the latter whose value for voting purposes they considered merely three-fifths of a citizen.
7. The literature on the Constitutional Convention is vast and ever growing. For useful overviews see Akhil Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2005); Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York: Random House, 2009); Carol Berkin, A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (New York: Harcourt, 2002); Michael J. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010); Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seclorum: The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1985); Jack Rakove, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1996); David O. Stewart, The Summer of 1787: The Men Who Invented the Constitution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).
History likes winners, thus less has been written on the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution that took its place. For a recent study, see George Van Cleve, We Have Not a Government: The Articles of Confederation and the Road to the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).
8. Works on George Washington outnumber even those on the Constitution. For biographical primers, see Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin Press, 2010); James Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974); Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004); Don Higginbotham, George Washington: Uniting a Nation (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002); and Edward J. Larson, The Return of George Washington: Uniting the States, 1783–1789 (New York: Harper Collins, 2015).
9. Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 24.
10. Ibid., 37–38.
11. Ibid., 19.
12. Larson, Return of George Washington, 73.
13. For resolutions and revenue, see Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 18–22, and Edward J. Larson, The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History (New York: Modern Library, 2005), 73. For “climax of popular absurdity,” see National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter “NARA”), Founders Online, “From George Washington to John Jay, August 15, 1786,” https://founders.archives.gov/GEWN-04-04-02-0199.
14. NARA, Founders online, “From James Madison to Edmund Pendleton, 24 February 1787,” http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-09-02-0151. For “too good an opinion,” see NARA, Founders Online, “From George Washington to John Jay, August, 15, 1786,” https://founders.archives.gov/GEWN-04-04-02-0199.
15. Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 67.
16. For state constitutions, see Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions: Republican Ideology and the Making of the State Constitutions in the Revolutionary Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980). For “monarchical part,” see Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 430.
17. For “mistaken,” see Wood, Creation of the American Republic, 430. For “was supposed,” and “mischief,” see Thomas Paine, Collected Writings, ed. Eric Foner (New York: Library of America, 1995), 330 and 360. For Hamilton, see NARA, Founders Online, “From Alexander Hamilton to Robert Morris, August 13, 1782,” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-03-02-0057-0001. For Jefferson, see “Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 13, 120–121,” The Founders Constitution, University of Chicago Online Resource, http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch10s9.html.
18. For “overtly monarchical,” see Brendan McConville, The King’s Three Faces: The Rise and Fall of Royal America, 1688–1776 (Chapel Hill: Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 138; for “ongoing struggle,” 7; for “brightest gem,” 254.
19. Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2017), 124.
20. Edwin Wolf, “The Authorship of the 1774 Address to the King Restudied,” The William and Mary Quarterly 22, no. 2 (April 1965): 189–224.
21. The Works of Benjamin Franklin (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1840), 10:436. See also Edmund Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 213.
22. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Vintage, 1998), 156.
23. For “depravity,” see Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, 60. For “succession,” see Richard J. Ellis, ed., Founding the American Presidency (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 73. Bruce Springsteen sagely made the same point in his 1978 “Badlands”: “Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king / And a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.”
24. Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 88.
25. For discussion of the effect of Shays’s rebellion on constitutional reform, see Melvin Yazawa, Contested Conventions: The Struggle to Establish the Constitution and Save the Union (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 15. For “slaughtering,” see Stewart, Summer of 1787, 15. For “lowest abyss,” see Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 99.
26. For a Hamiltonian reading of the ensuing constitutional debates, in which support for a strong state capable of imposing order predominated, see Max Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). For “may pervade,” see Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 92.
27. NARA, Founders Online, “From Washington to Lafayette,” February 1, 1784,” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-01-02-0064.
28. “To George Washington from John Tucker, 16 July, 1785,” The Papers of George Washington, Confederation Series, vol. 3, 19 May 1785–31 March 1786, ed. W. W. Abbot (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 129–30. For Washington as a substitute for lost monarchy, see the insightful Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elective King: George Washington and the Presidential Title Controversy of 1789 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014). For “omnipotent,” see Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elective King, 39.
29. For “principle conduct,” see NARA, Founders Online, “George Washington to Thomas Jefferson, February 25, 1785,” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0001. For Wood, see Don Higginbotham, George Washington Reconsidered (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001), 317. For “bestowed,” see Joanne B. Freeman, Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), xvi.
30. For “eye of the world,” see NARA, Founders Online, “From George Washington to Benjamin Harrison, January 22, 1785,” http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0202. For “radical cures,” see ibid., “From George Washington to James Madison, March 31, 1787,” http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0111.
31. Ibid., “From Henry Knox to George Washington, April 9, 1787,” http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0129.
32. Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 122.
33. NARA, Founders Online, “From Washington to Lafayette, June 6, 1787,” https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-05-02-0200 .
34. Chernow, Washington, 526. See also Ellis, His Excellency, 171.
35. Madison’s Notes, June 1, 1787.
36. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 206.
37. Madison’s Notes, June 4.
38. For “following your plow,” see NARA, Founders Online, “From Henry Knox to George Washington,” March 24, 1785, http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/04-02-02-0316. See also Gary Wills’s appropriately titled Cincinnatus: George Washington and the Enlightenment (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984).
39. For “moving emblem,” see Wills, Cincinnatus, 19. For “arresting the progress,” see Chernow, Washington, 531.
40. For “Slushington,” see Bartoloni-Tuazon, For Fear of an Elective King, 62. For “good one,” see Madison’s Notes, June 4.
41. Logan Beirne, Blood of Tyrants: George Washington and the Forging of the Presidency (New York: Encounter Books, 2013), 46.
42. Madison’s Notes, June 4.
43. Ibid., June 2.
44. For the best single source on impeachment’s trajectory from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries, see Berger, Impeachment, 7–54. For Williamson, see Madison’s Notes, June 2.
45. Madison’s Notes, July 20.
46. Ibid., July 19.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., July 20.
50. Ibid.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid.
55. Madison’s Notes, September 8.
56. Ibid.
57. John T. Noonan, Jr., Bribes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 43.
58. Madison’s Notes, July 24.
59. Gary L. McDowell, The Language of Law and the Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 225–26.
60. “At the very least,” historian Jack Rakove concluded, “English history would suggest that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ were regarded as high and grave indeed—posing deep threats to the survival of the constitution and even the kingdom and the preservation of essential rights and liberties.” Rakove, “Statement on the Background and History of Impeachment,” George Washington Law Review 67 (1999): 684. For “very being,” see Gary L. McDowell, “ ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’: Recovering the Intentions of the Founders,” George Washington Law Review 67 (1999): 641.
61. Madison’s Notes, July 20. See also Sunstein, Impeachment, 43.
62. For “lying to the American people,” see Mark Lander and Matt Apuzzo, “Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Front-Runner, Once Argued Broad Grounds for Impeachment,” The New York Times, July 5, 2018. For “public men,” see Sunstein, Impeachment, 62. For Hamilton, see “The Federalist Papers: No. 65,” Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed65.asp.
63. For Randolph, see Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment: Report by the Staff of the Impeachment Inquiry, Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 93rd Cong. (February 1974), https://archive.org/stream/constitutional_grounds_for_presidential_impeachment_-_house_judiciary_comm_staff_report_february_1974/constitutional_grounds_for_presidential_impeachment_-_house_judiciary_comm_staff_report_february_1974_djvu.txt. For “wicked motive,” see Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 366.
64. For “MAN OF THE PEOPLE,” see Daniel T. McCarthy, “James Wilson and the Creation of the Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 17, no. 4 (Spring 1987): 693, emphasis in original. For “personally responsible” and the Virginia ratification debates, see Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington, D.C., 1836), 4:74.
65. Klarman, Framers’ Coup, 366.
66. For Madison, see ibid., 377. “The argument that only criminal offenses are impeachable is deeply and profoundly wrong,” Tribe and Matz argue. “Even having died a thousand deaths, this theory staggers on like a vengeful zombie. Democrats and Republicans alike have invoked it when doing so suited their partisan needs—and then flipflopped when that seemed more expedient.” Tribe and Matz, To End a Presidency, 45. Sunstein agrees: “Shoplifting isn’t an impeachable offense, nor is jaywalking,” he said, “nor is income tax fraud. For impeachment, we need an abuse of presidential authority.” Christina Pazzanese, “Sunstein on Impeachment,” The Harvard Gazette, October 30, 2017.
67. For “chastisement,” see “The Federalist Papers: No. 65,” Avalon Project. “Nowhere does the Constitution state or otherwise imply that Congress must remove a president whenever that standard [impeachment] has been met,” Tribe and Matz note. “Even when members of the House and Senate believe that the president has committed ‘high crimes and misdemeanors,’ they possess a legally unlimited prerogative not to end his term in office.” Tribe and Matz, To End a Presidency, 70.
68. For “thousand voices,” see John P. Kaminski and Jill Adair McCaughan, eds., A Great and Good Man: George Washington in the Eyes of His Contemporaries (Madison, Wis.: Madison House Publishers, 1989). For “too low,” see Edward J. Larson, George Washington: Nationalist (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2016), 71.
69. For “dangerous one,” see David O. Stewart, Madison’s Gift: Five Partnerships That Built America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016), 75.
1. William A. Russ, Jr., “Was There Danger of a Second Civil War During Reconstruction?” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 25 (June 1938): 39.
2. Ibid., 41.
3. Ibid., 54.
4. Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War: Meditations on the Centennial (New York: Random House, 1961), 15.
5. For my treatment of the Johnson impeachment, I am chiefly indebted to David M. DeWitt, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York: Macmillan, 1903); Annette Gordon-Reed, Andrew Johnson (New York: Times Books, 2011); Chester G. Hearn, The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2000); John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper, 1956); Michael Les Benedict, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York: Norton, 1973); Eric L. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960); William H. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson (New York: Morrow, 1992); Edmund G. Ross, History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, by the House of Representatives and His Trial by the Senate for High Crimes and Misdemeanors in Office (Santa Fe, N.M.: 1896); Gene Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York: Morrow, 1977); David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009); Hans L. Trefousse, Andrew Johnson: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1989), and Trefousse, Impeachment of a President: Andrew Johnson, the Blacks, and Reconstruction (New York: Fordham University Press, 1999).
6. On Reconstruction in general, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper Collins, 2014); Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 2005); Douglas R. Egerton, The Wars of Reconstruction: The Brief, Violent History of America’s Most Progressive Era (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014); David M. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002); Gregory Downs, After Appomattox: Military Occupation and the Ends of War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015).
7. Foner, Reconstruction, 177.
8. Ibid., 178.
9. Ibid., 180.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., 189.
13. Ibid., 250.
14. For these points I drew on my treatment of the subject in my The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (New York: Random House, 2018), 62–65.
15. Tenure of Office Act of 1867, 39th Cong. (1867), https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/Johnson_TenureofOfficeAct.pdf.
16. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 491–509.
17. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 56–57.
18. Edward Pessen, Riches, Class, and Power Before the Civil War (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1990), 77.
19. Gordon-Reed, Andrew Johnson, 18–19.
20. Ibid., 22.
21. Ibid., 24.
22. Ibid., 61.
23. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 51.
24. Stewart, Impeached, 14.
25. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 51.
26. The Abraham Lincoln Association, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 7, https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln7/1:1124?rgn=div1;view=fulltext.
27. Ibid.
28. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 58.
29. Noah Brooks, Lincoln Observed: Civil War Dispatches of Noah Brooks, ed. Michael Burlingame (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 166–67.
30. Stewart, Impeached, 11.
31. Gordon-Reed, Andrew Johnson, 85–86.
32. Ibid., 2.
33. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 75.
34. Ibid., 82.
35. Stewart, Impeached, 17–18.
36. Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), is the standard work on Lincoln, slavery, and emancipation.
37. Louis P. Masur, Lincoln’s Last Speech: Wartime Reconstruction and the Crisis of Reunion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 189.
38. Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 3.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., 11–12.
41. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests, 204.
42. Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 12.
43. Foner, Reconstruction, 249.
44. Ibid.
45. Edward Alfred Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates (New York: E. B. Treat, 1866), 750.
46. Ibid., 752.
47. Meacham, Soul of America, 15.
48. Ibid., 16.
49. Ibid.
50. Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 187. This and the quotations below are from the tenth article of impeachment.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid., 187–88.
54. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests, 209.
55. Ibid., 210.
56. Stewart, Impeached, 75.
57. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests, 209–10.
58. Ibid., 210.
59. Stewart, Impeached, 83.
60. Ibid., 75.
61. Ibid., 81–82.
62. Ibid., 83.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., 84.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid., 84–85.
67. Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 46–53.
68. Stewart, Impeached, 81.
69. Ibid., 96.
70. Ibid.
71. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests, 214.
72. Ibid.
73. Ibid.
74. Stewart, Impeached, 102.
75. Ibid., 106.
76. Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 78.
77. Stewart, Impeached, 111.
78. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests, 215.
79. Stewart, Impeached, 111–12.
80. Andrew Johnson, “Third Annual Message,” December 3, 1867, American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29508.
81. Stewart, Impeached, 117.
82. Ibid., 118–23.
83. Ibid., 136–40.
84. Ibid., 148.
85. Ibid., 153.
86. Ibid.
87. Les Benedict, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, 184–88.
88. Stewart, Impeached, 154–55.
89. Ross, Johnson Impeachment, 134.
90. Ibid., 98.
91. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 246.
92. Ibid., 250.
93. For accounts of the wheeling and dealing, see, for instance, Stewart, Impeached, 181–92, 240–49, and 221–22.
94. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 247.
95. Ibid., 249.
96. Ibid., 254.
97. McKitrick, Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction, 490.
98. Ibid.
99. Ibid., 507.
100. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 282.
101. Ibid., 283.
102. Ibid.
103. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, 122.
104. Ibid., 128–29.
105. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 285–95; Stewart, Impeached, 275–83.
106. Stewart, Impeached, 278.
107. Ibid., 279.
108. Smith, High Crimes and Misdemeanors, 265–65.
109. Stewart, Impeached, 225.
110. Ibid., 303.
111. Foner, Reconstruction, 335.
112. Ross, Johnson Impeachment, 165.
1. Angelo Lano, interview by Timothy Naftali, May 28, 2009, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, Richard Nixon Library and Museum (hereafter RNL), Yorba Linda, California.
2. Ibid.; Stanley I. Kutler, The Wars of Watergate (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), 406.
3. Lano, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, May 28, 2009.
4. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., interview by Timothy Naftali, Douglas Brinkley, and John Powers, November 30, 2007, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
5. On Richardson’s role in this drama, see Michael Koncewicz, They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).
6. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., journal entry, October 21, 1973, box 513, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.
7. John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage (New York: Harper Perennial, 2000), 114.
8. Kutler, Wars of Watergate, 412.
9. Timmons to Haig, October 22, 1973, White House Central Files, Timmons Staff Member & Office Files, box 40, RNL.
10. Andrew Kohut, “How the Watergate Crisis Eroded Public Support for Richard Nixon,” Pew Research Center, August 8, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/08/08/how-the-watergate-crisis-eroded-public-support-for-richard-nixon/.
11. Walter Flowers, oral history [June 1975], box 3, folder 10, “Fragile Coalition” series, William S. Cohen Personal Papers, Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine in Orono.
12. John A. Farrell, Richard Nixon: The Life (New York: Doubleday, 2017), 474–75; White House Tapes, Conversation 505–18, May 28, 1971, RNL; Dwight Chapin, interview by Timothy Naftali, April 2, 2007, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
13. See the documentary evidence assembled for the RNL’s Watergate gallery, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/watergate-exhibit-evidence.
14. Ibid.
15. John J. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight: The Break-in, the Tapes, the Conspirators, the Pardon (New York: Norton, 1979), 48.
16. See the documentary evidence assembled for the RNL’s Watergate gallery, https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/watergate-exhibit-evidence.
17. D. Todd Christofferson, interview by Timothy Naftali, July 15, 2008, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
18. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight, 96.
19. Ultimately, the House had formed a special committee to deal with Johnson. Stanley Kutler speculates that in October 1973 the House did not form a special committee because at the time Gerald Ford had yet to be confirmed as vice president and as the next in line, House Speaker Carl Albert might have been perceived as selecting a committee to put himself in the White House. As a result, Albert relied on an existing, permanent committee. Kutler, Wars of Watergate, 440.
20. Jimmy Breslin, How the Good Guys Finally Won: Notes from an Impeachment Summer (New York: Viking, 1975), 71–76. Breslin, a brilliant reporter and raconteur, chose Tip O’Neill’s office as the principal perch from which to watch the impeachment drama unfold. As it turned out, it was an excellent place to see how it started but not the way it ended.
21. Ibid., p. 74.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. Albert Jenner, interview by Scott Armstrong, December 23, 1974, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein Watergate Papers, Harry Ransom Center, Univeristy of Texas in Austin.
25. Timmons to Haig, October 22, 1973, “Congressional Contact Update,” Timmons SMOF, box 40, RNL.
26. Robert Bork, interview by Timothy Naftali, December 1, 2008, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
27. Francis O’Brien, telephone interview by Timothy Naftali, July 30, 2018.
28. Breslin, How the Good Guys Finally Won, 73.
29. Francis O’Brien, interview by Timothy Naftali, September 29, 2011, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
30. Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 645–47; John Doar, “The Work of the Civil Rights Division in Enforcing Voting Rights Under the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960,” Florida State University Law Review 25, no. 1 (1997): 9.
31. John Doar, interview by Timothy Naftali, January 19, 2014, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
32. Francis O’Brien, telephone interview by Timothy Naftali, August 1, 2018.
33. Thomas Railsback, “John Doar Briefing, January 7, 1974,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Thomas Railsback Collection, Western Illinois University in Macomb (hereafter WIU).
34. Railsback, “Briefing, January 29, 1974.”
35. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight, 208–9.
36. Christofferson, Richard Nixon Library Oral History Project, July 15, 2008.
37. Leon Jaworski, The Right and the Power: The Prosecution of Watergate (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1976), 45.
38. Henry Ruth, interview by Timothy Naftali, November 12, 2011, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL. “I don’t [think] there was anyone on the staff,” Ruth recalled, “who thought there was a legal impediment to indicting a president.”
39. Richard Ben-Veniste and George Frampton, Jr., Stonewall: The Real Story of the Watergate Prosecution (New York: Simon & Schuster), 223. His deputy, Henry Ruth, concluded that some of Jaworski’s legal judgments—on whether he could indict Nixon in office, for example—were a product of his not wanting to have to stay in Washington, D.C., longer than a year. Ruth, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, November 12, 2011.
40. Jaworski, Right and the Power, 53–54.
41. Sirica, To Set the Record Straight, 215.
42. Ruth, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, November 12, 2011.
43. Robert L. Doar, “With Thoroughness and Honor: The Work of the Impeachment Inquiry Staff of the House Judiciary Committee, 1974” (unpublished thesis, Princeton University), p. 40, M. Caldwell Butler Papers, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., Archives, Washington and Lee University School of Law, Lexington, Va. (hereafter W&L). John Doar’s son quoted from a document in his family’s private collection.
44. Doar, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, January 24, 2014.
45. Ibid.; Francis O’Brien, telephone interview by Timothy Naftali, July 30, 2018; Doar, “With Thoroughness and Honor,” 22, 45.
46. Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Nixon Presidency: Twenty-Two Intimate Perspectives of Richard M. Nixon, Portraits of Amerian Presidents, vol. 6 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987), 21.
47. Harlow to Haig, “Impeachment,” January 24, 1974, box 27, “Important Procedural Details January 1974,” Alexander Meigs Haig Papers, Library of Congress (hereafter LOC).
48. Railsback, “John Doar Briefing, January 7, 1974,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
49. Richard E. Israel, “Grounds for Impeachment: Summaries of the Reports of the Department of Justice, the House Judiciary Committee Staff and White House Staff on the Grounds for the Impeachment of the President,” Congressional Research Service, April 17, 1974, box 1, folder 3, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
50. Ibid.
51. Doar to St. Clair, February 25, 1974, Railsback papers, Box 1, Folder 15, (Impeachment Committee Actions #5), WIU.
52. “Points,” March 8, 1974, Impeachment/Judiciary Committee—through April 74 (4 of 8), Timmons SMOF, Box 38, RNL.
53. Richard Nixon, Question-and-Answer session at the Executive’s Club of Chicago, March 15, 1974, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=4386.
54. Jaworski, Right and the Power, 101–2.
55. Francis O’Brien, telephone interviews by Timothy Naftali, July 29 and July 30, 2018.
56. M. Caldwell Butler audio diary, tape 2B [March 19, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
57. Vern Loen to Timmons, “Carlos J. Moorhead’s conversation,” March 8, 1974, Timmons SMOF, box 38, Impeachment/Judiciary Committee Through April 74 (4 of 8), RNL.
58. Republicans on the committee shared their frustration regarding the White House’s stonewalling with Rhodes on March 19. Railsback, “Meeting of Republican House Judiciary Committee with Republican Leadership in John Rhodes’ Office,” March 19, 1974, box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU; Rhodes conveyed this frustration to the president. See Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 992–93.
59. Railsback, “Telephone Call with Bill Hewitt, March 27, 1974, [3:00 P.M.]” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU. William Hewitt was chairman of the board of John Deere.
60. Nixon, RN, 990.
61. Raymond Thornton, “Article 2,” Thornton autobiographical fragment, box 73, folder 18, Ray Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
62. Thornton, “Judiciary Notes,” April 4, 1974, box 1, folder 3, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
63. The description of the meeting comes from “Article 2,” Thornton autobiographical fragment, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas. Thornton cites Doar referring to the appearance of running a “fishing expedition” at the April 8 Democratic caucus. See “April 8, 1974,” box 75, folder 14.
64. Woodward and Bernstein, Final Days, 106–9.
65. See Carl Bernstein’s 1975 interviews with Bryce Harlow, Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, University of Texas.
66. Railsback, “Memo to the File: Meeting of Republican Members of the Judiciary Committee Members in Ed Hutchinson’s office on April 10th at 10:00 A.M.,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
67. Railsback, “Full Committee Meeting, April 11, 1974,” ibid.
68. Butler audio diary, tape 5B [April 11, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
69. St. Clair offered to transmit materials on four out of six of the requests. He was referring to Doar’s letter of February 25, 1974. For the letter, see box 1, folder 16, “Actions of the Judiciary Committee,” Railsback Collection, WIU.
70. Butler audio diary, tape 5B [April 11, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
71. Ibid., tape 5A [April 8, 1974].
72. Ibid., tape 5B [April 11, 1974].
73. Thornton, Article 2, Thornton autobiographical fragment, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas.
74. J. Fred Buzhardt, interviews by Bob Woodward, 1975, box 1, folder 10; box 4, folder 16, Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, University of Texas.
75. Jeffrey Banchero, interview by Timothy Naftali, October 28, 2011, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
76. Railsback, “Two Telephone Conversations on April 29th, with John Doar at About 12:15 P.M. and Another with Bert Jenner at About 5:00 P.M.,” box 1, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
77. Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation Announcing Answer to the House Judiciary Committee Subpoena for Additional Presidential Tape Recordings,” April 29, 1974. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?PID=4189, accessed August 22, 2018.
78. Butler audio diary, tape 6A [May 1, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
79. Railsback, “Telephone Conversation with Bert Jenner, at 9:45 A.M., April 9,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
80. William Cohen, oral history, June 17, 1975, box 2, folder 6, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine; Thornton, “May 8, 1974,” box 75, folder 14, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas.
81. Ben-Veniste and Frampton, Stonewall, 277–79; Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Inner Circles: How America Changed the World (New York: Warner, 1992), 455.
82. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Final Days (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976) 155–60.
83. Butler audio diary, tape 10B [May 15, 1974?], Butler Papers, W&L.
84. Barber Conable interview, box 75, folder 8, Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, University of Texas.
85. Woodward and Bernstein, Final Days, 175.
86. Thornton, “Article 3,” Thornton autobiographical fragment, box 73, folder 19, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas.
87. O’Brien, Richard Nixon Library Oral History Project, September 29, 2011.
88. Breslin, How the Good Guys Finally Won, 154–55.
89. Howard Fields, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Wherefore Richard M. Nixon…Warrants Impeachment: The Dramatic Story of the Rodino Committee (New York: Norton, 1987), 186; Doar, “With Thoroughness and Honor,” 177.
90. Fish, Cohen, and Butler discuss how their fellow Republicans “rationalized away” the March 21, 1973, conversation, on tape 1 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 7, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
91. Railsback, “Meeting in Ed Hutchinson’s office on April 2nd at 4 p.m.” Railsback papers, Box 3, Folder “Railsback Personal Notes,” WIU.
92. Railsback, “Republican Meeting of Judiciary Committee Members in Ed Hutchinson’s Office at 3:00 p.m. on June 12, 1974,” Railsback papers, Box 3, Folder “Railsback Personal Notes,” WIU.
93. See Fish, Flowers, Mann, and Railsback discussing how they made their decision to impeach on tape 4 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 8, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
94. Railsback, “Attitudes at This Time, June 14, 1974,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
95. Butler audio diary, tapes 12B [June 11 and June 12, 1974] and 15B [June 20, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
96. Ibid., tape 17B [June 14, 1974].
97. Francis O’Brien, telephone interview by Timothy Naftali, August 1, 2018.
98. Ibid., July 30, 2018.
99. Thornton dictation, June 28, 1974, box 75, folder 14, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas.
100. Nixon, RN, 1041.
101. Raymond Thornton, oral history, June 13, 1975, box 2, folder 17, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
102. Thornton, “June 4, 1974,” box 75, folder 14, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas.
103. Flowers discusses how “the center coalesced” on tape 1 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 7, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
104. Butler audio diary, tape 19B [July 10, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
105. Ibid.
106. Railsback, oral history, June 11, 1975, box 2, folder 13,“Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
107. Railsback, “Meeting in Bob McClory’s Office at 9:00 A.M. on July 12th,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
108. “Testimony of Herbert Kalmbach,” excerpt in box 1, folder 5, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
109. James Mann, oral history [June 1975], “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
110. “Comparisons: HJC Transcripts with White House Transcripts,” box 73, folder 19, Thornton Papers, University of Arkansas.
111. Butler audio diary, tape 18A [evening of July 18, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
112. Kutler, Wars of Watergate, 496. Butler, on the other hand, was not angered by this release. He noted that it just showed “we ought to have these tapes.” Butler audio diary, tape 18A [evening of July 18, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L. For what Flowers and some of the others thought about St. Clair’s reveal in his rebuttal, see tape 1 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 7, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
113. Butler audio diary, tape 20A [July 19, 1974], W&L.
114. Mann and Flowers discuss the sway they thought they might have with other Southern Democrats on tape 1 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 7, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
115. Mann, Flowers, Fish, Cohen, and Railsback discuss the informal July 18, 1974, meeting in a joint oral history done a year later on tape 1,“Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
116. Hamilton Fish, Jr., oral history, June 26, 1975, box 2, folder 9, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
117. O’Brien, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, September 29, 2011.
118. Evan Davis, interview with Timothy Naftali, September 29, 2011, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
119. Railsback, “The Series of Events That Led to the Establishment of the So-Called Fragile Bipartisan Coalition,” August 6, 1974, box 3, “Railsback Personal Notes” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
120. Railsback, oral history, June 11, 1975, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
121. Doar, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, January 19, 2018.
122. Richard Nixon, “Address to the Nation Announcing Answers to the House Judiciary Committee Subpoena for Additional Presidential Tape Recordings,” April 29, 1974. www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?PID=4189, accessed August 22, 2018.
123. James Mann, oral history, June 19, 1975, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine. See also tape 2 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 10, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
124. O’Brien, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, September 29, 2011.
125. Elizabeth Holtzman, interview by Timothy Naftali, April 5, 2017, Richard Nixon Oral History Project, RNL.
126. Railsback, “Series of Events.”
127. See Butler, Cohen, Fish, Flowers, Mann, Railsback, and Thornton oral histories, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
128. Railsback, “Series of Events”; Lou Cannon, telephone interview by Timothy Naftali, July 31, 2018.
129. Elizabeth Drew, Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Nixon’s Downfall (New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2014), 328–29.
130. Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics, 2nd ed. (Baton Rouge: Lousiana State University Press), 454–55.
131. Before coming to the White House, J. Fredrick Buzhardt had been a lawyer at the Pentagon, where he earned the respect and friendship of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. In 1973, after Laird came to the White House as a political counsel after leaving the Pentagon, Buzhardt informed him of what he had learned about the president on the tapes. See Dale Van Atta, With Honor: Melvin Laird in War, Peace, and Politics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008). This authorized biography contains Laird’s telling of learning the truth of Nixon’s guilt from Buzhardt and how this affected Laird’s decision to stay in the White House. In 1985, Laird told this story to scholar Stanley Kutler. See Kutler, Wars of Watergate, 386.
132. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., interview by Bob Woodward, box 72, folder 7; box 76, folder 5, Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, University of Texas. Haig’s actual schedule of meetings with Nixon and the timing of his telephone calls conflicts with the versions both Buzhardt and Nixon tell. See Haig schedule, July 23, 1974, Haig Papers, LOC.
133. J. Fred Buzhardt, interview by Bob Woodward, box 1, folder 10; box 4, folder 16, Woodward and Bernstein Watergate Papers, University of Texas.
134. NIXON, RM, P. 1050; HAIG TELEPHONE LOG, JULY 23, 1974, HAIG PAPERS, BOX 5, LOC.
135. Nixon, RN, 1051–52.
136. In June, Jaworski had appealed the decision, and Sirica had decided that the section was now relevant, given the start of the impeachment process. Transfer of the transcript, however, had been blocked by the White House.
137. The material leaked to Railsback is the document Eugene V. Risher, “Threat (Friday ams)” in box 3, “Opinions on Impeachment,” folder 4, Railsback Papers, WIU.
138. Butler audio diary, tape 17B [June 14, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
139. Railsback, oral history, June 11, 1975, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine; Butler audio diary, tape 21B [July 27, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
140. Butler audio diary, tape 21B [July 27, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
141. Time, August 5, 1974.
142. Ibid.
143. See Railsback’s comments on tapes 2 and 3 of the “Fragile Coalition” oral history, July 11, 1975, box 2, folder 7, “Fragile Coalition” series, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
144. M. Caldwell Butler, “Washington & Lee University Speech,” July 6, 1987, Butler Papers, W&L.
145. Cohen oral history, June 17, 1975, “Fragile Coalition” series, box 2, folder 6, Cohen Personal Papers, University of Maine.
146. Haig, Inner Circles, 484.
147. Lou Cannon, telephone interview with Timothy Naftali, July 21, 2018.
148. Trent Lott, interview with Timothy Naftali, December 8, 2008, Richard Nixon Library Oral History Project, RNL.
149. Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Pat Nixon: The Untold Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 421.
150. Railsback, “Telephone Call from Chairman Pete Rodino at 10:05 A.M. August 6th,” box 3, “Railsback Personal Papers” folder, Railsback Collection, WIU.
151. Barbara Bush, conversation with Timothy Naftali, October 2, 2015.
152. Butler audio diary, tape 22A [July 31 or August 1, 1974], Butler Papers, W&L.
1. Referral to the United States House of Representatives, Submitted by the Office of the Independent Counsel, September 9, 1998 (The Starr Report), The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/icreport/6narritxiv.htm#L138.
2. Peter Baker, The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William Jefferson Clinton (New York: Scribner, 2000), 45. Much of this treatment of Clinton’s impeachment and trial draws from my coverage of the events for The Washington Post in 1998 and 1999, as well as my subsequent book on the episode.
3. A survey by CNN, USA Today, and Gallup from March 20 to 22, 1998, found that 33 percent of respondents considered Clinton “honest and trustworthy” while 66 percent approved of the way he handled his job. Keating Holland, “Most Americans Think Their Moral Standards Are Higher Than Clinton’s,” CNN.com, March 23, 1998.
4. Sam Tanenhaus, “How Richard Nixon Created Hillary Clinton,” Bloomberg, November 5, 2015.
5. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Living History (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 68.
6. Sam Roberts, “John Paul Hammerschmidt, 92, Dies; Congressman Defeated Clinton,” The New York Times, April 2, 2015.
7. David Maraniss, First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 327.
8. Bill Clinton, “Remarks at the Funeral Service for President Richard Nixon in Yorba Linda, California,” April 27, 1994, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=50052.
9. Referral to the United States House of Representatives, Submitted by the Office of the Independent Counsel, September 9, 1998 (The Starr Report), The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/icreport/6narritxiv.htm#L132.
10. Susan Schmidt, Peter Baker, and Toni Locy, “Clinton Accused of Urging Aide to Lie,” The Washington Post, January 21, 1998.
11. Dan Balz, “President Imperiled as Never Before,” The Washington Post, January 22, 1998.
12. Bill Clinton, interview with Jim Lehrer, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, January 21, 1998.
13. John F. Harris and Dan Balz, “Clinton Forcefully Denies Affair, or Urging Lies,” The Washington Post, January 27, 1998.
14. Baker, Breach, 27.
15. Peter Baker, “When the President Testified: People in the Room Recall Clinton’s 1998 Interrogation,” The New York Times, May 29, 2018.
16. Referral to the United States House of Representatives, Submitted by the Office of the Independent Counsel, September 9, 1998 (The Starr Report), Document Supplement A, 460–61.
17. Ibid., 510.
18. Baker, Breach, 33.
19. Bill Clinton, “Address to the Nation on Testimony Before the Independent Counsel’s Grand Jury,” August 17, 1998, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=54794.
20. Ibid.
21. Keating Holland, “Poll: Most Americans Think Clinton Lied, but Don’t Want Impeachment,” CNN.com, August 24, 1998.
22. Baker, Breach, 34.
23. Ibid., 42.
24. Charlie Savage, “Can the President Be Indicted? A Long-Hidden Legal Memo Says Yes,” The New York Times, July 22, 2017.
25. 28 U.S. Code, chap. 40, section 595 (c), https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/part-II/chapter-40.
26. Referral to the United States House of Representatives, Submitted by the Office of the Independent Counsel, September 9, 1998 (The Starr Report), The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/icreport/icreport.htm.
27. Baker, Breach, 108.
28. Ibid., 120.
29. David Stout, “Hyde Acknowledges ‘Indiscretion’ Following Report of an Affair,” The New York Times, September 17, 1998.
30. “Seats in Congress Gained/Lost by the President’s Party in Mid-Term Elections,” American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/mid-term_elections.php.
31. Michael Kranish and Brian McGrory, “Democrats Show Spunk, Blunting Republican Gains,” The Boston Globe, November 4, 1998.
32. Baker, Breach, 143.
33. Impeachment Inquiry: William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States, Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, 105th Cong. (November 19, 1998), https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc3/pdf/GPO-CDOC-106sdoc3-9.pdf.
34. Baker, Breach, 181–82.
35. Ibid., 123.
36. “Senate Censures President,” March 28, 1834, Senate Historical Office, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Senate_Censures_President.htm.
37. Baker, Breach, 236.
38. “Excerpts from Impeachment Debate,” December 18, 1998, The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/excerpts121898.htm.
39. Ibid.
40. Baker, Breach, 241–42.
41. Ibid., 16–17.
42. Robert Livingston, speech to the House, December 19, 1998, The History Place, http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/gephardt-livingston.htm.
43. Baker, Breach, 247.
44. Livingston speech, December 19, 1998.
45. The House voted 228 to 206 to approve article one largely along party lines, with five Democrats breaking from their colleagues to vote yes and five Republicans defecting from their caucus to vote no, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1998/roll543.xml. Article two was rejected 229 to 205, with twenty-eight Republicans joining a nearly unanimous Democratic caucus, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1998/roll544.xml. Article three was approved 221 to 212, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1998/roll545.xml. Article four was rejected 285 to 148, with eighty-one Republicans voting no, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/1998/roll546.xml.
46. John F. Harris, “Clinton Vows to Finish Term,” The Washington Post, December 20, 1998.
47. Ibid.
48. Baker, Breach, 261.
49. Ibid., 301.
50. Charles F. C. Ruff, speech to the Senate, January 19, 1999, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/rufftext011999.htm.
51. Dale Bumpers, speech to the Senate, January 21, 1999, The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/bumperstext012199.htm.
52. Baker, Breach, 373.
53. The senator was Charles Grassley of Iowa. Baker, Breach, 397.
54. Ibid., 389.
55. All forty-five Democrats were joined by ten Republicans in voting against the first article of impeachment, February 12, 1999, https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00017.
56. Five Republicans joined the Democrats in rejecting the second article of impeachment, February 12, 1999, https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=106&session=1&vote=00018.
57. Baker, Breach, 411.
58. John F. Harris, “President Responds with Simple Apology,” The Washington Post, February 13, 1999.
59. Ibid.
60. Baker, Breach, 417.
61. Bill Clinton, “Interview with Dan Rather of CBS News,” March 31, 1999, American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=57340.
62. Baker, Breach, 417.
63. Jennifer Steinhauer, “Bill Clinton Should Have Resigned Over Lewinsky Affair, Gillibrand Says,” The New York Times, November 16, 2017.
64. Peter Baker, “ ‘What About Bill?’ Sexual Misconduct Debate Revives Questions About Clinton,” The New York Times, November 15, 2017.
1. For “going to happen,” see “Giuliani Likens Clintons to Crime Family,” The Gazette (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), November 2, 2016; and Tessa Berenson, “Donald Trump Raises Specter of Hillary Clinton Impeachment,” Time, November 2, 2016. See also Mike DeBonis, “Some Republicans Are Discussing Their Plans for President Clinton—Starting with Impeachment,” The Washington Post, November 3, 2016.
2. Peter W. Stevenson, “ ‘Prediction Professor’ Who Called Trump’s Big Win Also Made Another Forecast: Trump Will Be Impeached,” The Independent, November 11, 2016.
3. Berenson, “Donald Trump Raises Specter of Hillary Clinton Impeachment.”
4. “Obama Blasts Republicans for Clinton Impeachment Talk,” Politico, November 2, 2016.
5. Madison’s Notes, July 20.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. David Greenberg, “Andrew Johnson: Saved by a Scoundrel,” Slate, January 31, 1999.
9. John Farrell’s masterful new biography examines this statement and its context clearly and insightfully. See Richard Nixon: The Life (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), 550.
10. I credit Joshua Adam Engel for this insight.
11. John M. Naughton et al., “Nixon Slide from Power: Backers Give Final Push,” The New York Times, August 12, 1974.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Unless one weighs less than a duck.
15. Note that a supermajority of popular support is not required to prevent calamity. The Constitution is clear on how to impeach and if necessary convict a president. It is silent on how to physically remove an unwilling ex-president from office. Force may be required, of the sort likely to enrage his or her most intractable supporters. Sixty-seven senators may be required to convict, but a far smaller number of determined loyalists, willing to deploy deadly force to defend their champion against charges and a conviction they deem illegitimate, could wreak havoc in Washington in a way unseen since the trampling of the 1932 Bonus March encampment. In this awful scenario, Tiananmen on the national mall would prove a more fitting analogy.
16. Andrew Arenge et al., “Poll: Republicans Who Think Trump Untruthful Still Approve of Him,” NBC News, May 2, 2018.
17. “ ‘Truth Isn’t Truth’: Trump Lawyer Rudy Giuliani Worries Mueller Interview Could Lead to Perjury Charge,” USA Today, August 19, 2018.