A former Southern governor, raised fatherless and poor, unexpectedly becomes president - and is attacked by radical Republicans who accuse him of shady land deals, influence peddling and being a disgrace to the dignity of his office. As he travels from state to state to rally support, crowds shout, ''Liar, liar, liar!''
Bill Clinton?
No, that's Andrew Johnson, the only president ever impeached by the House and put on trial in the Senate. Mr. Clinton has been compared, by himself and others, to Teddy Roosevelt, Warren Harding, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. But if Mr. Clinton's sex scandal decays into ''high crimes and misdemeanors,'' the history of Andrew Johnson offers a textbook lesson on the perils of impeachment.
To hear Bill and Hillary tell it, civility is at rock bottom. A ''vast right-wing conspiracy'' is fabricating rumors and lies to smear the president. No president has ever suffered such vitriolic ''hate.''
Not true. Take a look at what they called President Johnson in editorials and speeches in the House and Senate: Caligula, drunkard, monster, demented, opium addict, assassin of President Lincoln and ''tyrannical imbecile.'' His popular nickname, ''The Great Criminal,'' makes ''Slick Willie'' sound almost affectionate.
The conspiracy of abolitionists and radical Republicans who tried to evict President Johnson was no paranoid fantasy. They threatened his friends, trampled the Constitution, cooked up lies, offered bribes and opined that the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln was ''a godsend,'' except that it replaced a ''gorilla'' with a ''traitor.''
The impeachment was led by Rep. Thaddeus Stevens, Sen. Benjamin Franklin ''Bluff Ben'' Wade of Ohio and Sen. Charles Sumner, whose pompous insults provoked a brutal caning by Rep. Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate that still holds the record for the quickest way to stop a filibuster.
I followed the footprints of these political dinosaurs through three books I borrowed from a downtown time machine called Mercantile Library: Decisive Battles of the Law by Frederick Trevor Hill (1906), Impeachment, a Handbook by Charles Black (1974) and High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson by Gene Smith (1977).
I also learned that impeachment may be the most flawed mechanism in the Constitution - a rusted, steam-powered threshing machine with missing parts that snatches up and mutilates anyone who stands too close. It injured so many people the first time it was used, nobody has dared to throw it in gear again.
It didn't start out that way. At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, our Founders agreed that impeachment was proper for bribery and treason. But when George Mason added ''maladministration,'' James Madison replied, ''So vague a term will be equivalent to a tenure during pleasure of the Senate.''
Mr. Mason withdrew ''maladministration'' and substituted a the vague ''high crimes and misdemeanors'' that seems to cover everything from murder to jaywalking. Later, he refused to sign the Constitution.
It seems clear that our Founders did not want a parliamentary-style government that could remove a president anytime he became unpopular or angered Congress. But that's what they got in 1868.
The short list of Andrew Johnson's ''misdemeanors'': He was uncouth, a common tailor, a member of the ''mudsill'' class (white trash), solitary and stubborn, guilty of ''pure cussedness.'' He was chosen as vice president by Mr. Lincoln (for his second term, replacing Hannibal Hamlin) because he was a rare Southern Democrat who supported the Union. But then at his swearing-in ceremony, he humiliated himself. Recovering from illness, he fortified himself with a water glass ''filled to the brim'' with whiskey. Then he poured and gulped another. As he headed for the ceremony, he ran back for a third. When he rose for a five-minute speech, his face was beet red.
''The first words that came out were a stammering series of disconnected sentences,'' Mr. Smith wrote in High Crimes. ''It began to dawn upon the listeners that something was wrong. Johnson waved his arms and his voice rose and he lapsed into the chanting and twanging southernisms of the Tennessee hill country. 'I'm a-goin' for to tell you, here, today. Yes, I'm a-goin'
for to tell you all, that I'm a plebeian!' . . . Finally, after 15 ghastly minutes, he was finished.''
President Lincoln hung his head in shame and told a marshall, "Don't let Johnson speak outside.''
He may have been a plebeian. But accounts agree that Andrew Johnson was not a lush. His "high crime'' was being soft on the South. The Radical Republicans had noose-fever to "hang'' the South for the Civil War. They passed the Freedman's bill giving ex-slaves voting rights that they wouldn't consider in their own states. They sent Yankee military governors to rule the defeated Confederate states and refused to let them send anyone back to Congress.
Andy Johnson was a fire-breathing radical, too ‹ until Abe Lincoln was shot. When he suddenly became president, Mr. Johnson saw the wisdom of the Lincoln plan to reunite the nation and bring the South back on equal terms. "Let 'em up easy,'' Mr. Lincoln said.
To radical Republicans, abolitionists and northern families, that betrayed the men who died for the Union. They wanted revenge. They wanted to carve up and rename the Southern states as the "Territory of Lincoln,'' "Territory of Grant'' and "Territory of Sherman.''
And when President Johnson refused, they passed laws to shackle his presidential power. And when he vetoed the laws, Congress overrode his vetoes. The last straw was the Tenure of Office Act, taking away the president's authority to remove any of his cabinet officers who had been confirmed by the Senate.
The target of that breach of the separation of powers was Edwin M. Stanton, secretary of war ‹ and spy for the Radical Republicans.
President Johnson had enough. He fired Mr. Stanton, nearly provoking a military confrontation when Mr. Stanton refused to leave his office. Still smoldering from the Civil War, the nation was a gunshot away from igniting a military takeover.
And Congress rushed to impeach the president for violating a law that was passed to provoke him.
President Johnson demanded a test in the Supreme Court. He was so certain the Tenure of Office Act was unconstitutional, he was ready to resign if he was wrong.
The Bill of Impeachment passed by the House was a varmint stew of squirmy conspiracies, slithering innuendo and venomous rumors. But it was the Senate trial which disgraced the Constitution.
George Mason's vague language let the Senate invent rules and refuse to hear any witnesses called by the president's lawyers (including William S. Groesbeck of Cincinnati). The Senate trial was so odiously partisan that U.S. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase of Cincinnati (for whom Northern Kentucky University's law school is named) nearly quit his constitutional role as presiding judge.
Sen. Wade of Ohio, the acting vice president, called an illegal special session and voted for an impeachment that would have elevated him from lame-duck election loser to 18th president of the United States.
In the end, the Senate impeached itself. Sen. Edwin Ross of Kansas, defying arm-twisting, bribes and threats, stood and cast the single, decisive vote against impeachment: "Not guilty.'' Later, he said the moment was like looking into his own grave. Although history proved him a hero, he lost his Senate seat and nearly his life when he returned to Kansas.
President Johnson served his term, returned to Tennessee, then won a seat in the same Senate that had tried to destroy his presidency and our Constitution.
Such an ugly chapter of American history should teach us a lesson: Impeachment is so hazardous, any rational, decent president would rather resign than put himself and the country through the ordeal of 1868. President Richard Nixon started packing as soon as articles of impeachment were introduced in the House in 1974.
It's also a strange blend that combines all the simplicity of litigation with the impartiality of partisan politics. And when law is stirred with politics, politics always floats to the top.
On the surface, President Johnson resembles President Clinton. But a closer look reveals stark differences. Mr. Johnson was a poor speaker, rough as tree bark, devoid of charm or humor. But he stood rooted like a Tennessee oak against a howling gale of public opinion and a lynch-mob Congress, to defend a principle: the Constitution.
Mr. Clinton is a silk-smooth charmer who has never met a principle that's more important than a poll.
President Johnson fought to save our constitutional separation of powers, to keep Congress from "devouring'' the presidency. President Clinton is being devoured by his own sleazy behavior, and he vows to "never'' quit fighting anything that could separate Bill Clinton from power.
The story of Andrew Johnson is an operator's manual full of warnings about accidents that happen if impeachment is used carelessly. But the founders put it there for a reason ‹ if not for "The Great Criminal,'' maybe they had in mind the man Monica Lewinsky named "The Big Creep.''
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
BRONSON ARCHIVE
