Impeachment is the ultimate power that Congress has over those in the federal judiciary and executive branch whom members of Congress believe are abusing their offices.

Although it was a key element in the Constitution’s balance of powers, Congress has only moved to impeach seventeen men (no women yet), seldom removing them from office. The process begins in the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representatives, which holds hearings on each particular case. If a majority of the committee believes there is enough evidence to go forward, it takes the case to the House for debate and a vote. Then, if a majority of representatives in the House agree, which constitutes the impeachment, the House managers present the case before the Senate. The senators (presided over by the chief justice of the Supreme Court) act as jurors in the case—a two-thirds majority being required for conviction.

Only two presidents have been impeached, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999, though a vote of the congressional committee to impeach Richard Nixon, because he “prevented, obstructed, and impeded the administration of justice” in relation to Watergate, led to his resignation in 1974. In the Johnson and Clinton cases, the charges were brought by politicians who fundamentally disagreed with the presidents over major political and social issues. In the earlier instance, radical Republicans wanted a more vigorous assault on racial injustices in the South, while in the recent case the family-values right wing of a vastly different Republican Party endeavored to turn Clinton’s sexual philandering into the sort of “crimes and misdemeanors” required to remove a president.

But impeachment proceedings in American history have almost always been about struggle over competing values. Like elections, most congressional impeachment proceedings have been stridently political affairs, arising not randomly throughout American history, but at critical junctures when ideological struggle has been especially intense. While such proceedings concentrate attention on the actions of particular individuals, they have arisen at moments of uncertainty and transition in American culture. Personality and politics have been deeply entwined throughout American history.

This was the case in 1868 amidst the struggle over the aims of Reconstruction; in the early 1970s, at a time of intense struggle over the Vietnam War and domestic policies; and again in the late 1990s. In each case, impeachment proceedings had serious implications for political party realignment.

In their aftermath, the most important impeachment proceedings in American history have directly affected the balance of ideological groups within major political parties. In the recent case, the Republican Party, at every turn in Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, sided with its most determined conservative wing. Beyond the issue of Clinton’s conduct, this group had engaged in a crusade against both Clintons for several years. While the mass media often focused on the personal attacks, basic differences on public policies undergirded the conservative crusade. The House managers gambled that more media attention would turn public opinion against Clinton, and that, if Monica Lewinsky testified about her affair with Clinton, they would be able to reveal the president’s alleged untruths. This gamble did not pay off; public opinion remained steadfastly in favor of bringing the “embarrassment” to a speedy end. The salaciousness of the information revealed in the hearings and trial turned the public against the messengers rather than the accused. Some of the tensions arising out of this failure carried over into the struggle over the Republican presidential nomination and the campaign for the 2000 election. While the more moderate wing of the party wished to turn attention away from the role it played in the impeachment process and has quickly aligned itself behind George W. Bush (making his primary campaign coffers among the largest ever), the radicals, led by men like Patrick Buchanan and Gary Bauer, continued to focus on Clinton (Buchanan going so far as to suggest that were he to be elected president the first thing he would do is read Clinton his rights).

In the aftermath of earlier impeachment efforts, political movements to alter the political landscape gained ground, feeding off disaffection in the country Other factors were important in each movement, but disillusionment with the state of American politics was significant in each case. Recently disillusionment with the state of politics has intensified. The Jesse Ventura election in Minnesota is an interesting manifestation of such sentiment, and perhaps suggests that one consequence of the impeachment process may be the growing success of a third-party movement.

The role of the media in covering the House and Senate proceedings was also intriguing. As a result of its impeachment coverage, CNN emerged into a prominence on domestic coverage equal to its leadership in covering the Gulf War. Assumptions that ratings would be low led to surprisingly modest coverage by most networks. CNN’s closest rival was National Public Radio, the former providing the most detailed coverage and the latter providing extensive commentary. FOX and MSNBC decidedly tilted to the right during the proceedings. The web-site adjuncts to these outlets (and the major search engines) offered the public a new phenomenon: the ability to catch up and explore aspects of the process in varying levels of detail via the Internet.