—Commentary•
Outrider: No grounds for impeachment
By GARRY WILLS
Some recent commentary on the
prospect of impeaching President
Nixon makes it look as if the im
peachment proviso in the Constitution
is of no use whatever. If a President is
riding high, he cannot be impeached. If
he is brought low, he is too weak to be
impeached without disabling the
country. We have to bow to him, or prop
him up; we can never bring him down.
In that case, why does the Con
stitution bother to give the impeaching
power to Congress? Well, the framers
of the Constitution wanted to give the
legislature, as the source of law, final
authority — to it are given the supreme
powers to make war, control the purse,
and impeach members of the executive
and judicial branches. For historical
reasons, the President has become
more powerful in day-to-day matters,
and the Supreme Court more powerful
as the source of final appeal; but the
American fathers, with their ex
perience of the British Ministry and its
courts, felt the legislature — and
especially its more popular branch —
best represented the people at large in
setting the basic goals of society.
The original fear was that a
President and his cabinet could, like
King and ministry, override the will of
the parliament — not enforcing the
society’s laws, but substituting a dif
ferent program by fiat. It is this picture
that lies behind the Constitution’s list of
impeachable offenses: “Treason,
bribery, or other high crimes and
misdemeanors.” Misdemeanors could
cover almost anything: the offense is
left to congressional definition. Thus,
impeachment differs from regular
trial, in which the judge or jury convict
of one or more specific crimes, subject
to predefined law.
Much of the current talk about Mr.
Nixon’s troubles comes from a
disposition to treat impeachment as a
criminal trial — from which politics
should be kept separate. Politics is the
whole point of impeachment. We are
told, for instance, that President An
drew Johnson should not have been sent
to impeachment proceedings by the
House (and almost expelled by the
Senate) because he committed no
specific crime. (The removal of
Secretary of War Stanton was in his
power after all.)
But the Congress was saying John
son’s policy toward the South was not
the nation’s policy, as formulated by
the Congress; it was a presidential way
of making peace. What was wrong,
here, was not the procedure of
Congress, but the fact that the South
was disfranchised and the North was
vengeful in its moment of conquest. One
can agree with Johnson’s moderate
aims (and wonder how Lincoln himself
would have fared in pursuing them),
yet admit that democratic procedure
was on the side of Congress.
Democracies can err.
Impeachment is never justified
except to call a President back to
national policy, when his opposition to
that policy threatens grave immediate
damage, e.g., if the nation at.large had
opposed the Vietnam war, it would have
been worth impeachment to prevent his
prosecuting the war. Actually, of
course, the nation vaguely supported
the war, at least on Nixon’s terms.
Democracies do err.
What has all this to do with the
present? Well, some speak as if any
revelation of Nixon’s involvement in
Watergate would demand im
peachment automatically — as
discovery of a crime obliges the
authorities to indict. But there is no
political reason for removing Nixon
from office. He is not pursuing any
policy gravely at odds with national
purpose as that is articulated by the
legislature. In that case, imposing
criminal penalties on the President
would be a frivolous act. Only a grave
political purpose can justify the
specifically political means of checking
errant authority called impeachment.
Watergate, no matter what Nixon had
to do with it, affords absolutely no
grounds for impeachment.
Co-governance: an end to student input'
By BOB RENO
For the time being we can forget about
the tired old question of whether students
are “ready for equality”; it’s obvious that
the majority of faculty members aren’t.
Although there may be some degree of
truth in the notion that age and experience
are prerequisites to emotional maturity,
it’s been made clear by recent faculty
actions that neither can be by any means a
guarantee thereof.
Not long ago the Emerald ran a story:
“All-faculty committee to design co
governance system.” From beginning to
end, the article reflected the anachronistic
and egocentric attitudes that so typically
represent the faculty senate. I find this
jingoistic thinking on the part of some
mculty members totally objectionable.
First of all, I’m afraid the Emerald may
have been following a false notion in its
headline. Were those faculty senators
responsible for the passage of the
legislation (which has incidentally since
been passed by the general faculty at a
subsequent meeting) really concerned
with the issue of co-governance, or were
they simply interested in streamlining the
existing system of inequitable university
governance for the sake of expediency, to
the continued exclusion of adequate
student representation?
But even if they are considering co
governance, the attitude that faculty
members alone, exclusive of students, can
“design” such a system is so presump
tuous and distorted as to portend
inevitable failure of any co-governance
system as long as this bad faith persists in
faculty circles.
Webster’s defines the prefix “co-” as
“Together with, joint or equally.” Co
governance as a concept spells out an end
to token “student input” — to the
patronizing attitudes of condescension that
have traditionally typified the faculty
student relationship. But the way in which
faculty members are approaching im
plementation of the concept threatens to
adulterate it to the extent that the
emasculated faculty version of co
governance may no longer be recognizable
as such to students, the group responsible
for initially raising and defining co
governance as an issue.
It’s important to bear in mind that this is
not a faculty-initiated issue. It was the
student body that voted last term to
establish a new (interim) ASUO Con
stitution, which officially cites the goal of
next year’s ASUO as the negotiation of an
equitable system of university co
governance. But since that time faculty
and administration groups have been
quick to jump on the issue. The result is
that the whole concept of co-governance as
an issue is being totally coopted — trans
formed from a student initiated concept to
an exclusive “faculty” issue. If a purpose
or motive could be written in between the
lines, it could only be to destroy com
pletely the whole notion of co-governance
as originally conceived.
These attempts to undermine the
chances for a viable system of university
governance are well exemplified by the
above mentioned faculty decision to ex
clude students from the faculty committee
appointed to study the issue. If faculty
members were actually considering
possibilities for co-governance in good
faith, they’d obviously not have excluded
students from even a mere preliminary
study committee. It’s just patently ab
surd!
But in this case, faculty senators made
the right decision in terms of student in
terest, even if for the wrong reasons.
(Ironically, Dr. Rousseve had been con
tacted by the ASUO co-governance
negotiating team prior to the faculty
senate meeting, and had been asked to
withdraw that part of his motion which
placed three students on the study com
mittee. ) So you have a false picture all the
way around: those faculty members
narrowly concerned with defending their
interests against the “swarming hordes”
of students have accidentally adopted the
student position, while the self-styled
defenders of student interests (well
intentioned if self-deceptive) were arguing
for student representation on a committee
from which students had specifically
asked that they be excluded.
The problem lies in the common
assumption that faculty members can
define and decide student interests and
positions — an assumption that’s going to
have to be dispelled, and soon. We see a
great debate going on in the faculty sand
box (no less laughable than the recently
abolished ASUO sandbox), with some
fighting “on behalf” of the students and
some against, but none of them have
thought to stop long enough to ask the
students what they really want. Is this
emotional maturity?
Why should students actually want to be
excluded from the study committee?' In
light of all this manipulative behavior
from within faculty and administrative
circles, it’s become obvious that the main
threat to student interests is cooptation —
not exclusion! Token student input is not a
• necessary stepping stone to meaningful
student influence; it is a stumbling block
— a special kind of tokenism that “puts us
in our places” and keeps us there. (It was
precisely this realization that led to the
abolition of the ASuO Senate.)
The student body already has its mode
of representation worked out regarding
negotiations for co-govemance. The ASUO
Negotiating Team, established separately
from any faculty action, must remain
separate if it is to avoid the cooptative
grasp of the administrative bureaucracy
of the university. The inclusion of students
in any similar faculty bodies would only
destroy the autonomy and credibility of
the existing student negotiating team.
So to the general faculty we can only say
“thanks” for their recent decision, with
the understanding that any such thanks
comes in spite of, and not because of, their
intentions and efforts. We look forward to
better faith in future faculty-student
relationships than we’ve seen so far.
Note: Mr. Reno, an independent studies
sophomore, is a member of the ASUO Co
governance Negotiating Team.
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