Senators: Fight For Your Chamber!
Why Senators from both parties should dump the Mayorkas impeachment quickly
House of Representatives Republicans impeached Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas way back on February 13, and this week they’ve once again delayed sending the articles of impeachment over to the Senate. They’re now threatening (if that’s the word) to do it next week. The impeachment is a joke; they’ve specified nothing that would normally qualify as impeachable behavior, but are instead using the process to throw a tantrum over Joe Biden’s border policies.
Senate Democrats appear ready to dispose of the matter rapidly. There’s no need for a trial; they’ll either vote to dismiss, or vote to table it (for the details of Senate procedural options, see this CRS explainer). That’s exactly what they should do.
What’s more, if they can find any extra ways to humiliate the House managers and, by extension, the House “majority” that approved this sham by a 214-213 vote in the brief interval between when Majority Leader Steve Scalise returned from medical absence and before new New York Democrat Tom Suozzi was sworn in, so much the better.1 And Republicans should join them. This isn’t about Mayorkas or border security. It’s an assault on the Senate, which should defend itself.
The Senate, after all, really should do what it can to discourage frivolous impeachments. As we’ve seen in the three presidential impeachments over the last thirty years, impeachment trials mean turning the Senate chamber over to House managers on the one hand and the lawyers for the defense, on the other. Senators? They sit there silently until the show ends.
Does anyone remember anything that any Senator did during Bill Clinton’s trial or either of Donald Trump’s trials?
On the other hand, House managers get the spotlight. And it appears to help them: Of the thirteen House managers of the Bill Clinton impeachment, three - former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, and former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who was also a Senate nominee - wound up elected to statewide office. Two others are state judges. The sixteen House managers of the two Donald Trump impeachments haven’t done quite as well so far, but it’s early, and Adam Schiff is already on his way to the Senate.2
Even before that, it’s House committees that get all the attention as that chamber moves toward impeachment. In 1974, when the House Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Richard Nixon before he resigned in the face of certain impeachment and conviction, members of the House such as Barbara Jordan and future Senator William Cohen who get the attention.
Of course, those are presidential impeachments. This is just a cabinet secretary. It’s unclear whether even a full-blown Senate trial would produce much useful publicity for House managers. And the precedent (from judicial impeachments; there’s only been one previous cabinet impeachment) is that the Senate can form a committee to consider the impeachment, with the news media paying a lot less attention. Still, what matters is that members of the House are apt to believe they would be helped by the publicity, and without much downside risk.
I know: Senators are going to look out for themselves first, their party second, and the institution well behind those priorities. That’s just how it is. But in this case there’s really no self-interest involved in stretching out the proceedings. And any party interest is surely minimal. Sure, Republicans want to emphasize the border issues behind this impeachment, but it’s hard to see how this particular short-lived episode will add much to what they already have. It’s not as if Mayorkas is now, or will be, a household name. General election ads from Republicans on the topic are going to be ugly, but they’re going to be about Joe Biden, or in the case of downballot races the specific relevant Democrats. Not about Mayorkas.
But the institutional Senate interest is real. This is the second cabinet impeachment ever, and the first since the 19th century. If it successfully generates plenty of news, future House Republicans and Democrats are going to use their majorities (when the president is from the other party) to generate more and more impeachments based only on disliking policy, clogging up the Senate floor and generally turning Senators into extras in their own chamber. There’s no limit; if this goes well for the House, down the road we’re apt to get an impeachment of Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack the next time egg prices spike up and, for all we know, an impeachment of (Transportation) Secretary Mayor Pete because there’s too much traffic on the BQE or the Washington Beltway or the 405 near LAX. And the same, next time there’s a Democratic House and a Republican president.
There’s nothing at all wrong with out-parties using the committee system to investigate the executitve branch - whether it’s over malfeasance, unfortunate policy outcomes, or just policy they doesn’t like. Indeed, I’d like to see more serious oversight even during periods of unified government. But substituting the impeachment power for committee hearings doesn’t do anything for anyone other than showboating members of the House. Senators should do what they can to make this effort a failure. If for no other reason than to keep their fair share of showboating for themselves.
Granted, House Republicans already humiliated themselves by losing their first attempt at impeaching Mayorkas before Scalise returned. Counting votes really isn’t their strong suit.
There’s also Hakeem Jeffries, an impeachment manager who is now the Democrats’ Minority Leader. Of course it might be that they were managers because House leadesrhip thought they had bright futures and it’s impossible to prove that their impeachment participation helped them later, but it seems likely.