There’s a rich history of Americans cherry-picking comments from our founding fathers to bolster our own, modern-day arguments. Something about bringing up that elusive, 18th century sentence structure has a striking “je ne sais quoi” that says, “These are words. They are words that I know, and they are words that I am telling you now.”
President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial was a prime opportunity for members of a divided Senate to consult centuries-old documents to figure out what gives. Maybe he literally fought to the death in a duel against his own political rival, but what would Alexander Hamilton have to say about all this?
Trump’s legal team and Senate Republicans persistently argued that Hamilton, that hallowed expert in keeping it together for the sake of the republic, had the wisdom and foresight to warn us against partisan impeachments. Supposedly, he thought that they were bad, and he thought they shouldn’t happen.
But anyone making this claim is dramatically misrepresenting Hamilton’s position.
Where does this idea come from?
Republican senators and Trump’s defense team claimed that Hamilton wrote an essay in the Federalist Papers that opposed partisan impeachments. But that was not Hamilton’s argument or the purpose of his essay.
The gist of the essay is that the Senate is the right place to hold impeachment trials. Hamilton was not writing about party-line votes in the House of Representatives, as attorney Alan Dershowitz suggested here, months before joining Trump’s defense team.
More than half of Hamilton’s essay asks if the Supreme Court would be a more appropriate spot than the Senate for an impeachment trial. He didn’t think so, and the rest of the essay sums up why he believed impeachments were best tried in the Senate.
Hamilton wrote that the Senate would be “most inclined to allow due weight to the arguments” during the trial, or in other words, be neutral. He also believed that senators, as elected officials, could adequately try impeachments on behalf of the public they represent.
He pointed out that England had a similar setup that was viewed “as a bridle in the hands of the legislative body upon the executive servants of the government.”
Elected officials? Giving “due weight” to arguments? Bridles? This is boring! Where’s the full-throated warning against partisan impeachments?
Hamilton doesn’t do that in this essay.
Despite Hamilton’s argument that the Senate is the most equipped to conduct impeachment trials neutrally, he acknowledges that these events could be political. How could they not be, if they’re carried out by politicians?
He wrote that political factions could “enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other,” presenting the danger that the outcome of such a trial would be determined “more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.”
What’s the bottom line?
Hamilton pointed out the risks of holding impeachment trials in the Senate – the No. 1 being that it would be difficult for senators to be neutral. He never suggested that partisan politics are a reason to simply not hold impeachment trials. Despite their potential for bias, he ultimately thought senators were the best suited to conduct a neutral impeachment trial.
His essay didn’t address partisan dynamics during the House portion of impeachment proceedings at all. Dershowitz and others misrepresented the purpose of Hamilton’s essay and his position on the role politics plays in impeachment trials.
Contact Big If True editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@bigiftrue.org. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
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