1/ #Impreachment: a failed Constitutional design. Some basic data shows it doesn't do its job.
2/ The US has had 46 presidents, 49 VPS, 115 Supreme court justices, hundreds of senators and cabinet members and federal judges, and thousands of Representatives. How many impeachments?
3/ Answer: The US House info website lists a paltry 21 impeachements, 8 convictions, and 3 resigned. history.house.gov/Institution/Im…
4/ Impeachments are rare and they usually don't lead to conviction. What's the problem? Pretty simple, I think: it's a lot of work with little pay off and lots of downsides.
5/ What's the upside of impeachment and acquittal for legislators? You can get rid of a single bad guy.
6/ But there are lots of downsides: you spend precious time on impeachment, not your agenda; you essentially burn the impeached person's political network, which is valuable; if you impeach/vote to convict someone in your own party, your base hates you.
7/ This explains pretty easily why impeachment/conviction is so rare in the US system. It's just not worth it for most legislators. The incentives all go the wrong way.
8/ The upside of our current Constitutional system is that there are tons of indirect ways to curtail bad actors, mainly by spreading power and influence across the system: Federalism, the three branches, independent adminsitrative agencies, etc.
9/ Bottom line: Impeachment might as well not exist in our system, but the bright side is that the US system's layering and decentralization of (some) power is another way bad actors can be limited.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
