The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson Rolls in its Grave

He was too busy to become the Vice President of the United States — there was whisky to drink. While the most important people in the country waited inside the humid Senate chambers to witness the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, his running mate Andrew Johnson downed three tumblers of liquor to fight off a mean hangover from the previous night’s festivities.
The weather matched the occasion eerily well. Rainclouds loomed over Washington, D.C. on March 4, 1865, as spectators battled mud and soaked clothes. The ceremony had been moved inside the Senate chambers due to the rain, but the room’s poor ventilation offered little relief from the elements.
As he took the most solemn oath in the land, Andrew Johnson was “in a state of manifest intoxication,” according to journalist Noah Brooks. After a rambling speech that went well over its allotted time, Johnson failed to complete his first duty as Vice President, the swearing in of new senators. The mood in the room following Johnson’s antics is best summarized by his official U.S. Senate biography:
In the shocked and silent audience, President Abraham Lincoln showed an expression of “unutterable sorrow,” while Senator Charles Sumner covered his face with his hands. Former Vice President Hamlin tugged vainly at Johnson’s coattails, trying to cut short his remarks. After Johnson finally quieted, took the oath of office, and kissed the Bible, he tried to swear in the new senators, but became so confused that he had to turn the job over to a Senate clerk.
In essence, Andrew Johnson treated his inauguration like a sloppy wedding rehearsal dinner. He spent much of his speech rambling about his meteoric rise from humble roots, and while he had indeed come far from the log cabin in North Carolina where he was born, even he couldn’t have foreseen just how far he would fall upward. A mere six weeks after Johnson stumbled into the Vice Presidency, Abraham Lincoln’s assassination made him the 17th President of the United States.
Andrew Johnson’s time in the executive branch was brief and only noteworthy for its negatives. Of course, there was the drunken inauguration and accidental presidency, but even as president, his record was dismal. He used his veto powers widely and sloppily, and still holds the record for most vetoes overturned of any president in the history of the country. Congressional overrides of vetoes are extremely rare, requiring a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, so it takes a truly daft hand to have over half of your vetoes overturned as did President Johnson. Johnson opposed most Reconstruction legislation, even though abolitionists and congressional Republicans who sought stricter penalties for the old Confederacy expected him to be an ally.
Johnson was even formally impeached by the House of Representatives, a distinction he shares only with Bill Clinton. While he escaped conviction and removal from office by one vote, Johnson would go down as one of the least effective presidents of all time.
Johnson’s impeachment trial has been in the news lately because of the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Trump. As Americans try to make sense of the first such inquiry in two decades, it is helpful to look back at Johnson’s own impeachment for both context and clues as to where this all might go.
One clear parallel lies in the tight partisan divide that characterized Johnson’s trial. During his impeachment, not a single member of his Democratic Party even considered impeachment. Their absolute abdication of their oversight duties is reminiscent of today’s Republican Party, which has mainly either ignored or outright attacked the inquiry.
Johnson’s total support from his party would prove decisive, as all nine Democratic senators voted to acquit, saving his presidency by a razor-thin margin. Similarly, President Trump’s abnormal behavior in office has received minimal pushback from Senate Republicans, and while some senators like Mitt Romney of Utah have wavered on impeachment, there’s no reason to expect nineteen of them (the number required to reach a two-thirds majority) to defect and vote to remove President Trump from office, regardless of what evidence the House produces.
It’s grim news for those supporting impeachment, but hardly unexpected: no matter what comes up over the course of the current inquiry, President Trump will almost certainly avoid removal from office. However, that doesn’t mean impeachment is worthless — congressional oversight is a fundamental check on the president outlined in the Constitution, and regardless of your opinions on President Trump, the recreated transcript of his phone call with the Ukrainian president and damning testimonies of career State Department officials are certainly not, as he likes to call them, “absolutely perfect.”
If all of this has you feeling like you need a drink, I hear you. So let’s raise a stiff one to his Excellency, Wizard of Whisky and Tamer of Typhoid, President Andrew Johnson: impeachment trailblazer and sad indicator of what’s to come.

