Impeachment: Whose Stain? | The Nation   Impeachment: Whose
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Impeachment trials have notably lacked drama or even importance.
Often, they have been an anticlimax to the convulsive events
that precipitated them. Andrew Johnson's trial extended over
several months and was a tepid sideshow to the profound
political and legal struggles that marked Reconstruction. The
British Parliament considered Warren Hastings's fate
sporadically for eight years after he was impeached for his
mismanagement of India policies, a subject heatedly debated for
decades. The constitutional stakes sometimes appear high, but
impeachment is essentially a quasi-legal extension of politics.
The impeachment and trial of William Jefferson Clinton followed
form. Here was a proceeding whose remarkable moments seem in
retrospect to be Robert Byrd's bombastic oratory, Arlen
Specter's idiosyncratic attempt to import Scottish law by
rendering a verdict of "Not Proven," Henry Hyde's ongoi