No One Asked Me But… (November 20, 2019)

By DR. LARRY MOSES

No one asked me but… On Friday we will remember November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Americans condemn many nations around the world for their tendency to overthrow their duly established governments. However, if one looks closely at American history one will see that 47% of American presidents had one or more attempts on their lives. The others, besides Kennedy, murdered while in office are: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley.

The first recorded assassination attempt on an American president was against President Andrew Jackson while he stood on the steps of the Capitol. Richard Lawrence pulled the trigger on two pistols at point blank range, but both misfired. President Jackson beat the man into submission with his cane. That is my kind of President.

While campaigning for re-election in 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was shot by John Schrank. Roosevelt was shot in the chest but the bullet was slowed by his fifty page speech that was folded in his coat pocket. The bullet was further hampered by a glass case in his shirt pocket. Teddy was probably one of the most fit Presidents we have ever had. The bullet never passed the muscle mass of his chest.

He stepped up to the podium with blood soaking his shirt, and he quieted the crowd that was on the verge of lynching the assassin. As he began his speech, he stated, “Ladies and Gentlemen. I don’t know if you fully understand that I have just been shot. But it takes more than that to kill a bull moose.”

From that time on, Teddy ran as the Bull Moose candidate as he opposed both the Republican and Democrat candidates. He split the Republican Party and threw the election to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Since the election of Herbert Hoover in 1929, every President, with the exception of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, has been threatened by at least one assassination attempt. This brings me back to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. I was a young Marine on a temporary assignment to Marine Air Station in Yuma, Arizona when I was informed of the events in Dallas, Texas. It became one of those events that everyone knows what they were doing when they became aware of it.

The most recent visible presidential assassination attempt was against President Ronald Reagan on March 31, 1981. A madman, John Hinckley, shot the President and three others in an attempt to impress actress Jodi Foster.

Reagan underwent surgery to repair the damage of a bullet that entered his body under his left armpit. When his wife asked him, “What happened? He merely replied: “I forgot to duck.”
Hinckley was released from institutional psychiatric care on September 10, 2016. Does anyone else find it ridiculous that a man who attempted to kill the President of the United States is free to walk the streets while parents accused of bribing their children’s way into prestigious universities are being imprisoned? I must say it is heartwarming to know the government is protecting me from those rabid parents.

No one asked me but… The first President that the House of Representatives seriously contemplated impeaching was John Tyler. After succeeding President William Henry Harrison, Tyler vetoed legislation backed by his own Whig Party and that Harrison had promised to support. The Whigs kicked Tyler out of their party, and the House received a petition for a resolution asking him to resign or face the possibility of impeachment. He did not resign nor did the House move to impeach.

Today we are in the fourth attempt to politically assassinate a President through the use of the impeachment process.

Let’s be honest about this process. This is an attempt to overthrow a legitimately elected government. The first actual attempt to impeach a President was during the aftermath of the Civil War. After President Abraham Lincoln’s death, he was succeeded by his Vice President, Andrew Johnson. Johnson was a pro-Union Democrat who had refused to secede from the Union along with his state of Tennessee.

He favored a lenient approach to Reconstruction, and therefore clashed with Congress throughout his term, vetoing bills he felt were too harsh on the South. His removal and replacement of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, a Lincoln appointee who sided with the Radical Republicans, was the center piece of this impeachment. Congress produced 11 articles of impeachment and Johnson was impeached by a two-thirds super majority of the House.

When he was tried in the Senate, Johnson was acquitted by a single vote, when seven Republicans voted with Senate Democrats to keep him in office. Johnson’s defense argued that he hadn’t appointed Secretary of War Stanton which meant that he wasn’t violating the Tenure of Office Act when he replaced him.

The Senators who voted against removal decided that Johnson was being pushed out of office for purely political reasons. The violation of the Tenure of Office Act constituted neither a crime nor a violation of the Constitution.

The only other President impeached was President Bill Clinton. When his affair with Monica Lewinsky, partially conducted in the Oval Office, became public in January, 1998, Clinton denied the affair to federal investigators and the public. The articles of impeachment stated that Clinton had perjured himself by lying to investigators about his relationship with Lewinsky. They also said that he had obstructed justice by encouraging White House staff to deny the affair.

The outcome of Clinton’s trial reinforced the precedent that Presidents should be removed from office only in very limited circumstances. While many Senators agreed that Clinton had behaved badly, they ultimately decided that his misconduct wasn’t at the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The attempt to remove Clinton from office was doomed when public opinion turned against the political assassination of Clinton. In fact, Clinton’s job-approval rating peaked during the week of the impeachment.

The President best known for coming to the brink of impeachment, but not actually being impeached, was Richard Nixon. During the Watergate scandal, the House Judiciary Committee filed three articles of impeachment against the President for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Nixon resigned his office on Aug. 9, 1974, before the impeachment could move forward.

Democrats are now engaged in an investigation as to whether or not to bring impeachment charges against President Trump. They surely will. However, the Senate will not convict.

Thought of the week…“A good magistrate will not fear them, a bad one ought to be kept in fear of them.”
– Elbridge Gerry
speaking on the issue of impeachment.