Some commentators and politicians have suggested that any movement that leads to President Donald Trump’s impeachment will necessarily follow the straight and narrow political path of the Clinton impeachment in which the president’s popularity inexorably rose. President Bill Clinton’s case is widely assumed to set the terms for understanding Trump’s. But the facts and history instead indicate that the Clinton case bears little if any relevance to the Trump one, while the Nixon case shows similarity to Trump’s, including how President Richard Nixon, a far more popular president than the abysmally rated Trump, collapsed in public opinion as the drive to his impeachment unfolded.
In 1973 and 1974, the Democrats attacked a once-mighty but now badly weakened president with a strong case for impeachment. Nixon resigned.
In 1998 and 1999, the Republicans attacked a mightily popular president on a political upswing in his second term with a politically contrived and feeble case for impeachment. Republicans lost.
View the complete May 18 article by Sidney Blumenthal on the National Memo website here.