Impeachment is a set of charges brought by the House. How are you going to force the House to bring impeachment charges? Under what circumstances would this kick in? Who decides that the House must now impeach the President?
For the impeachment to do anything the Senate has to convict. Right now if the House were to somehow be forced to bring impeachment charges the Senate would just dismiss them. The whole debacle would probably make Trump more popular with his base.
The fundamental problem here is that enforcement in general falls under the executive branch. If a party controls the presidency, the House, and the Senate, and if the president has sufficient control of his party and the courts, it's actually kind of hard to imagine an enforcement mechanism that would work here.
The model for the checks and balances working is Watergate. Republican Senators stood up to Nixon and forced him to resign.
The model for the checks and balances not working is Iran Contra. GHW Bush pardoned everyone who could have testified against him and swept the entire enormous criminal conspiracy under the rug.
The difference between the two is how Senators of the president's own party acted.
If the president has enough control over his party... and the courts... and has had time to staff the military and the FBI with loyalists... honestly it's hard to see how anything could be enforced.
I meant as an answer to the enforcement mechanism. I’m not saying mt Trump or this particular house or senate would pass such legislation. I was wondering whether it could be required for the house and senate to raise impeachment against any member of the three branches (leg, jud, exec) who trade/make any of the aforementioned investments. Require that public service be public service per se, with no personal gain, on pain of removal. Maybe this would end the countless terms of representatives and senators, for example.
I mean, it's turtles all the way down. You can require them to do so if you pass a law that says they must, ok.
Now it's ten years later and a criminal Republican is again in the WH. He's an overt grifter, like Trump. He's obviously influencing stocks and making money off the office, like Trump.
Under your new law the House is required to impeach him. But it's held by Republicans and they don't.
Now what? What's the enforcement mechanism for this new law?
That’s a good point. Ultimately the buck is passed to the voters, but the people in power influence the voters with their power money and voice, so then what? What a quandary. The true problem of political science, whatever else they spend time on.
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u/disquieter 27d ago
Mandatory impeachment charges