It took nearly 80 years from the founding of Congress to the first impeachment of a president, Andrew Johnson in 1868, and another 130 years to the second, Bill Clinton in 1998, both Democrats impeached by a Republican House majority . That total of two impeachments in more than two centuries doubled in just over a year with the impeachments of Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021 by a Democratic-controlled House.

And now, just three years later, we have Republicans in the House of Representatives determined to impeach President Biden.

But to conclude that we have entered a sad new era of tit-for-tat recriminations, as some scholars and other observers have suggested since House Speaker Kevin McCarthy ordered an impeachment inquiry last week , amounts to simplistic both-side-ism. It’s wrong.

Such reasoning leaves both Democrats and Republicans engaged in a vengeful, self-perpetuating cycle of attempting to impeach a president of the other party, even when it is clear that the Senate will not vote to convict. No, what we have here is one party, a radicalized Republican Party, playing tit for tat and thereby normalizing the Constitution’s most extreme check on the presidency.

And it needs its marching orders from the former president, who has gone so far as to make “retaliation” a literal campaign promise. Either BLAME the BUM or fade into oblivion, Trump addressed House Republicans in an anti-Biden post on his social media site last month. They did it to us!

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, no fan of Trump or of House Republicans’ extremism, nevertheless recently tried to justify their rogue behavior with a bit of I told you so gloating: I said two years ago when we none had yet but two [Trump] accusations that once we go down this path, it will encourage the other side to do the same. He scolded: this is not good for the country.

Indeed it is not. But Biden’s impeachment inquiry is not at all the same as the House of Representatives’ actions in 2019 and 2021.

Both of Trump’s impeachments were well-deserved, based on hard evidence of abuse of presidential power that fit well within the Constitution’s definition of impeachable crimes: treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

It’s hard to believe that the founders wouldn’t agree that their criteria included a commander in chief who withholds military aid from an ally for fear of invasion by a shared enemy aid he signed into law after Congress passed it approved to pressure the ally to investigate the president’s political power. rival: ‘I’d like you to do us a favor. And it is almost certain that the Founders would approve of punishing a president for “incitement of insurrection” in order to overturn a demonstrably fair election and stay in power.

Compare these justified examples of Trump’s comeuppance with McCarthy and Co. opening an investigation into Bidens, what? They can’t tell you: the grounds for impeaching Biden have yet to be filled in. That’s what an investigation is intended for, says McCarthy.

Still, the hapless Javerts in the House of Representatives have been investigating Biden and his troubled son Hunter, looking for increasingly elusive evidence that the president was enriched by his son’s influence even before Republicans took control of the chamber in January. McCarthy’s announcement of an investigation did not change that long-running investigation. It only allowed the speaker to say the word impeachment in hopes of appeasing the bloodthirsty MAGA followers.

The

action could not calm anyone down. Meanwhile, more Republicans in the House of Representatives believed the so-far baseless crusade would interfere with the real business of Congress, like funding the government and avoiding an Oct. 1 shutdown. 1. (At least the obsession with Biden has distracted Republicans from their talk of ousting others in his Cabinet, though

Georgia

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently assured reporters: You can fire more than one person at a time.)

Let’s say that Republicans in the House of Representatives ultimately unite in impeaching Biden. Even then, the Democrats’ record over the past few decades offers no sign that they will retaliate through impeachment the next time they come to power against a Republican president. To be fair, they may again respond to factual evidence if Trump is re-elected. He has in fact promised to abuse power in a second term.

Democrats aren’t political wimps, but even many Republicans will tell you that their enemies have a responsibility gene when it comes to government: Democrats tend to want it to work reasonably well; Impeachments and shutdowns disrupt regular order. It is Republicans who have increasingly become the agents of chaos over the past quarter century.

Then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi long resisted calls from her left to impeach Trump, while as president he broke norms and bent the laws one after another

. He’s just not worth it, she said

until his blatant Ukrainian shakedown and election fraud left her no choice. Similarly, when she and the Democrats came to power after 2006, she declared that impeaching President George W. Bush over Iraq was off the table, despite Democrats’ lingering bitterness over the Republicans’ impeachment of Clinton over the covering up an affair.

Kevin McCarthy has none of the principles or leadership qualities of his predecessor. By opening the investigation into the president, under pressure from Trump to weaken Biden before the 2024 elections, he is doing exactly what

Ukrainian President Volodymyr

Zelensky had the courage to refuse this in 2019.

Pelosi, now a backbencher by choice, is taking it all in, without pleasure. For them to use [impeachment] in the frivolous way they’re doing it, this is really a disservice to the country, she said on MSNBC’s The Sunday Show, adding: This is almost silly, except it’s so serious.

Yes, it’s serious. Just not the Republicans. Only they treat impeachment as if it were simply a hammer in the political toolbox, reducing its power now and for the foreseeable future.

@jackiekcalmes