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What is impeachment?
Linguistically, the noun impeachment is a synonym for charging and it comes from the verb to impeach meaning to charge someone. In political science, the verb to impeach has two meanings:
- Formerly, to charge a person with treason or other very serious crime against the state or/and nation before the Parliament or National Assembly.
- Contemporary, to charge head of state (the President or similar) or minister with treason or with crimes against the state.
As a noun with political meaning, impeachment means the charging of treason or other very serious crime which is brought against a head of state or the minister of the Government.[1] In other words, impeachment is “a formal process for the removal of a public official in the event of personal or professional wrong-doing”[2] or a formal accusation of the wrongdoing of the top state’s officials.
To impeach a public official is, in fact, to accuse him/her of crimes or wrongdoing in the execution of his/her duties in the office. Impeachment in the USA is the legal procedure by which any public official, including the President of the country, is charged with acting illegally (breaking the Constitution and other law packages) and may be forced to leave the office (the job position) before his term of office expires. The technical procedure of impeachment occurs in the House of Representatives (the lower house of the legislature), with any subsequent trial taking place in the Senate (the upper house). In the USA the Constitution provides for the impeachment of federal officials charged with “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanours”.[3] The House of Representatives has the sole power of impeachment and all impeachments are tried in the Senate with the Chief Justice of the US’ Supreme Court presiding. Technically, conviction requires the agreement of 2/3 of the present members.
Since 1787, there were seven federal judges who have been removed following impeachment proceedings. However, the most famous case in the history of the USA was against President Richard M. Nixon (Republican) in 1974 who resigned after the House of Judiciary Committee gave a recommendation that he should be impeached, i.e. charged for the illegal activity (crime) of Watergate. Therefore, formally, the impeachment procedure against R. Nixon never started in Congress but he lost his post in the Oval Office[4] because of the impeachment’s shadow.
The 1972−1974 Watergate scandal
Richard Nixon (1913−1994) was the 37th President of the USA from 1969 to 1974 and the only one to resign. He was elected to the US’ House of Representatives in 1946, where he was on the House Un-American Activities Committee, and after that was elected to the US’ Senate in 1950. He was a Vice-President under the US President D. Eisenhower (1953−1961).[5] However, he became defeated by John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election campaign for the Oval Office.
As the President, R. Nixon became successful in ending the Vietnam War and establishing a closer relationship between the USA and China. Nevertheless, R. Nixon became mostly remembered for having to leave the Oval Office because of the Watergate scandal. He was given the nickname Tricky Dick for the very reason that he was often not direct and/or honest in his dealings with the people.[6]
Watergate was the US’ political scandal in 1972−1974 that forced President R. Nixon to resign from the office. The scandal involved the Republican Party’s members who in 1972 tried to steal information from the offices of the Democratic Party in the Watergate building in Washington, DC. However, according to Nixon’s official statement, he did not know about this case, but The Washington Post and tapes of his telephone conversations offered the evidence that he lied.
A US’ national newspaper The Washington Post (since 1877) played a focal role in the revealing of the Watergate scandal. It is published in Washington, DC, and became a well-known newspaper for its liberal opinions. The Washington Post was the first newspaper to investigate the full story about the Watergate scandal, and for this action, it won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973.[7]
In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee agreed three articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. He was charged with 1) the abuse of his power as the President, 2) obstruction of justice, and 3) contempt of Congress. However, before these articles could be voted on by the full House of Representatives, R. Nixon resigned from the post as the US’ Congress was about to begin official impeachment against him, after being informed that his impeachment and conviction were otherwise inevitable. Nevertheless, several important officials of the administration have been sent to the prison as they are sentenced to the crime for illegally trying to keep the affair secret.[8] In essence, the Watergate scandal made the role of the US’ President weaker for several coming years and a big number of people have been shocked that the officials in power had behaved very badly. From that time on, the word ending “-gate” was used in many cases to create official names for other political scandals like, for instance, Irangate.[9]
