Michael: The United States has had 46 presidents. Kevin, quick guess: how many have been impeached? Kevin: Oh, that’s easy. It’s a huge deal when it happens. There was Clinton, and then Trump twice… so three times for two presidents? And Johnson way back when. So three presidents. It’s a national crisis, a once-in-a-generation political earthquake. Michael: That’s what everyone thinks. But here’s the wild part. The founders who designed it, people like James Madison and George Mason, they intended it to be a regular, even necessary, political tool. A constitutional pressure valve. We’re the ones who’ve turned it into this earth-shattering, apocalyptic event. We’ve forgotten how to use it, or maybe, we’ve forgotten what it was even for. Kevin: Wait, a regular tool? Like, something you pull out of the toolbox every few years? That sounds terrifying. It feels like the political equivalent of pulling the fire alarm when there’s no fire. Michael: Or maybe the alarm is supposed to be more sensitive than we think. This is exactly the tension that a team of superstar historians and journalists—Jon Meacham, Timothy Naftali, Peter Baker, and Jeffrey Engel—tackle in their book, Impeachment: An American History. Kevin: That's a powerhouse lineup. A Pulitzer winner, a top Nixon scholar, a chief White House correspondent... they're like the Avengers of presidential history. Michael: Exactly. And what's fascinating is they wrote this in 2018, right as impeachment was becoming a constant, screaming headline. They were trying to bring some historical sanity to a modern political firestorm. And to do that, they start with the case that basically set the template for all-out political war: the impeachment of Andrew Johnson.

Kevin: Okay, Andrew Johnson. I remember him from history class as the guy who got impeached right after the Civil War, but the details are fuzzy. It feels so distant. What was his great crime? Did he steal from the treasury? Betray the country? Michael: That’s the million-dollar question, and the answer gets to the heart of our first big idea from the book: impeachment as a raw political weapon. Johnson’s "crime" wasn't really a crime at all. It was a political and ideological war against Congress for the soul of the country. Kevin: A war? That sounds dramatic. Set the scene for me. Michael: Picture it: April 1865. The Civil War has just ended. The country is in ruins, physically and emotionally. And then, Lincoln is assassinated. Suddenly, the man in charge is his Vice President, Andrew Johnson. Lincoln, a Republican, chose Johnson, a Democrat from Tennessee, as his running mate in 1864 for one reason: political expediency. To project an image of national unity. Kevin: A political marriage of convenience. I can see how that could go wrong fast. Michael: Disastrously wrong. Johnson was a Southerner to his core. He was a staunch white supremacist who believed, in his own words, that "white men alone must manage the South." The Radical Republicans who controlled Congress had a completely different vision. They wanted to fundamentally reconstruct the South, punish the former Confederates, and, most importantly, guarantee civil rights for the millions of newly freed slaves. Kevin: So this wasn't a disagreement. This was a head-on collision of two opposing worldviews. Michael: A total collision. Johnson starts vetoing every major piece of Reconstruction legislation Congress passes. He pardons ex-Confederate leaders. He’s actively undermining everything the Republicans are trying to do. They see him as an obstacle, a traitor to Lincoln's legacy, who is single-handedly trying to lose the peace after they just won the war. Kevin: Okay, so they hate him. I get that. But you can't impeach a president just because you disagree with his policies, right? That would be chaos. Where's the "high crime and misdemeanor"? Michael: This is where it gets dirty. The book, particularly Jon Meacham’s chapter, makes it clear they went looking for a crime. Frustrated and furious, Congress passed a law in 1867 called the Tenure of Office Act. It basically said the president couldn't fire his own cabinet members without the Senate's approval. Kevin: Hold on. That sounds… kind of unconstitutional. The president can’t fire his own team? That feels like a trap. Michael: It was a trap! A perfectly laid legal snare. They knew Johnson believed the act was unconstitutional and that he desperately wanted to fire his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, who was a holdover from Lincoln's cabinet and was secretly feeding information to the Radical Republicans. Kevin: So Stanton was a spy in the cabinet. This is getting good. Michael: Absolutely. So Johnson, believing he's defending the power of the presidency, fires Stanton. And the moment he does… SNAP. The trap springs. The House of Representatives immediately votes to impeach him. The charge? Violating the Tenure of Office Act. Kevin: That’s it? That’s the "high crime"? Firing a guy who was actively working against him, based on a law that was designed to trap him? That feels incredibly flimsy. It sounds like a political hit job, not a legal proceeding. Michael: That's precisely the point the book makes. It was a political hit job. The impeachment trial in the Senate was a spectacle. It was pure political theater. But here's the most incredible part of the story. To remove Johnson from office, they needed a two-thirds majority in the Senate. It all came down to the wire. Kevin: How close did it get? Michael: It came down to a single vote. One. Seven Republican senators broke with their party and voted "Not Guilty." They basically said, "We despise this president. We hate his policies. But removing a president over a policy dispute, using a law we think is unconstitutional, would do more damage to the presidency and the country than Johnson ever could." The pressure on these men was immense. They were promised bribes, threatened, their careers were ruined. But they held the line. Kevin: Wow. One vote away from removing a president from office. That’s a terrifying thought. So Johnson's case really establishes this idea that impeachment can just be a continuation of politics by other means. Michael: Exactly. It’s the ultimate example of impeachment as a political weapon. There was no smoking gun, no clear crime against the state. It was a power struggle, and impeachment was the chosen battlefield. But that’s not the only way it can work. Sometimes, the system needs a weapon, because the person in charge has truly gone rogue. And that brings us to Richard Nixon.

Kevin: Okay, so if Johnson’s case was a messy political brawl, Nixon feels different. That’s the one everyone points to as the system working. That was about actual crimes, right? Watergate, the cover-up… that wasn't just a policy disagreement. Michael: You've nailed the transition perfectly. This is where we see the other face of impeachment. It shifts from being a partisan sword to a constitutional shield. As Timothy Naftali, the Nixon expert in the book, lays it out, the story of Nixon’s near-impeachment is the story of an accountability engine slowly, painfully, but ultimately successfully, firing on all cylinders. Kevin: What made it so different? Why did this one "work" when Johnson's just devolved into a political food fight? Michael: Two words: evidence and bipartisanship. Let's start with the crime. It wasn't the "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate Hotel itself. As the book emphasizes, the truly impeachable offense was the cover-up. Nixon used the full power of the presidency—the CIA, the FBI, hush money—to obstruct justice. He was actively trying to corrupt the institutions of government to save his own skin. That’s a direct assault on the republic. Kevin: So it’s not about the initial act, it’s about the abuse of power to hide it. That feels like a much clearer line. Michael: A much clearer line. But for a long time, it was just his word against his accusers. Nixon was defiant. He insisted he was innocent. The country was split. It was becoming another partisan battle. Then came the bombshell. During the Senate Watergate hearings, a White House aide named Alexander Butterfield casually reveals that Nixon has a secret taping system in the Oval Office. He’s recorded everything. Kevin: Oh man. The tapes. I can’t even imagine the panic in the White House when that news broke. Michael: The game completely changed. Now, there was a chance for undeniable proof. Nixon fought tooth and nail to keep those tapes private, claiming executive privilege. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously that he had to turn them over. And when he finally did, one tape in particular, from June 23, 1972, became known as the "smoking gun." Kevin: What was on it? What was the smoking gun? Michael: It was Nixon, just six days after the Watergate break-in, explicitly ordering his chief of staff to have the CIA lie to the FBI to shut down the investigation. It was all there, in his own voice. The conspiracy, the obstruction, everything. Kevin: Undeniable. You can't argue with that. What happened when that tape came out? Michael: His support evaporated. Instantly. Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had been defending him, who had been arguing this was a partisan witch hunt, heard that tape and just threw in the towel. One Republican congressman from Virginia, Caldwell Butler, had been a staunch Nixon loyalist. After hearing the evidence, he said he had no choice. He voted for impeachment. It was a moment of conscience over party. Kevin: That’s the key difference from the Johnson case, isn't it? In the Nixon case, key members of his own party turned on him. It became bipartisan. Michael: It became bipartisan because the evidence was irrefutable. The book highlights the deliberate efforts of the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Peter Rodino, and the special counsel, John Doar—a Republican—to keep the process non-partisan and focused on the facts. They knew if it looked like a political hit, it would fail. The smoking gun tape gave them the cover they needed to act. Republican senators went to the White House and told Nixon flat-out: "You will be impeached by the House, and you will be convicted in the Senate. It's over." Kevin: And that's when he resigned. He jumped before he was pushed. Michael: He jumped because the accountability engine had him cornered. There was no escape. The system, with all its checks and balances—a free press, an independent judiciary, and a Congress willing to do its constitutional duty—had worked. It was messy, it took two years, and it tore the country apart, but it proved that not even the president was above the law.

Kevin: So when you put these two stories side-by-side, it's like looking at two completely different tools. With Johnson, impeachment was a blunt instrument, a club used in a political street fight. With Nixon, it was more like a surgeon's scalpel, used precisely to remove a cancer from the body politic. Michael: That’s a perfect way to put it. And that’s the incredible, and frankly terrifying, tension the book leaves us with. The Constitution gives Congress this "most formidable weapon," as Thomas Jefferson called it. In the hands of pure partisans, as we saw with Johnson, it can be used to settle political scores and risk delegitimizing an election. But in the face of a true constitutional crisis, like Nixon's abuse of power, it’s the last line of defense for the republic. Kevin: The scary part is that it's the exact same constitutional clause, the same process. The only thing that changes is the context, the evidence, and the willingness of people to put country over party. Michael: And the book on Clinton's impeachment really drives that home. The Republicans had evidence of perjury, but the public largely saw it as a private matter, not a threat to the republic. It was highly partisan, and without bipartisan support and public outcry, it was doomed to fail in the Senate. It proved that even with a potential crime, the political will has to be there. Kevin: Which brings it all back to today. It makes you wonder, in our current hyper-polarized media environment, could we even tell the difference anymore? Could a Nixon-style bipartisan moment, driven by facts, even happen today? Or is every potential scandal now destined to become a Johnson-style political war from the very first minute? Michael: That is the billion-dollar question the authors were wrestling with back in 2018, and it's a question we are still living through every single day. The lessons from history are there, but they don't provide easy answers. They just show us the stakes. Kevin: It really makes you think about what it takes to hold power accountable. It’s not just about laws on paper; it’s about the character of the people enforcing them. Michael: Absolutely. And it's a responsibility that falls not just to politicians, but to citizens, to demand that accountability. We'd love to hear what our listeners think. Is impeachment a broken tool, or is it one we just need to re-learn how to use for its intended purpose? Find us on our socials and join the conversation. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.