With the impeachment inquiry proceeding in modern Washington, pundits have been raising the examples of earlier impeachments. Nixon, Clinton, and Andrew Johnson are regularly invoked as positive or negative predecessors. Respected historian Manisha Sinha sees the 1868 Johnson impeachment as a precursor of the likely impeachment of Donald Trump. Her interesting article can be found in the New York Times today.
From the article:
It is a myth that Mr. Trump seems to have fully bought into, given his defense of “beautiful” Confederate statues and monuments. Like Johnson, he uses derogatory language for people of color and he has expressed his preference for Nordic immigrants. Mr. Trump’s handpicked man in charge of immigration policy, the brain behind the separation of families in immigration detention camps, is Stephen Miller, who has recently been publicly revealed to be a white nationalist. The abolitionist feminist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper called Johnson an “incarnation of meanness,” words that are still applicable today.
Both Johnson’s and Mr. Trump’s concept of American nationalism is narrow, parochial and authoritarian. Johnson opposed the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, that guarantees equality before the law to all persons and citizenship to all born in the United States. Mr. Trump has threatened both to revoke its constitutional guarantee of national birthright citizenship and have the entire amendment overturned.
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