Ken Kollman - Political Processes of Impeachment

0:00 welcome back to this Teachout on 0:02 impeachment I'm here with Ken Coleman 0:04 who's a professor in political science 0:06 and the director of the Center for 0:08 Political Studies here at the University 0:10 of Michigan thanks for joining us today 0:11 Ken thank you for having me okay well 0:14 can you just tell us a little bit more 0:15 about your work and what you do here at 0:17 U of M so I do research on political 0:19 parties elections political 0:21 organizations in the United States but 0:23 also around the world 0:24 great so in this Teachout we've talked 0:27 through some of the legal processes 0:29 around impeachment but can you help 0:32 contextualize for the learners some of 0:33 the political processes that are 0:35 happening right now and what's at stake 0:37 for individual lawmakers well it's in 0:41 the context of a very deep partisan 0:42 polarization in Washington I mean the 0:44 parties are you know heading into an 0:48 election year there is a tremendous 0:50 amount of a kind of at stake in the 0:55 coming elections in 2020 not only 0:56 presidential election but for control of 0:58 Congress control of Congress over the 1:00 last few decades has flipped back and 1:03 forth and the stakes are very high 1:06 and Congress kind of is on a knife's 1:11 edge in terms of which party controls 1:12 which chamber and so forth so in that 1:16 context the political parties don't have 1:18 a lot of kind of incentives right now to 1:21 compromise and to be terribly bipartisan 1:26 and a lot of things right now and 1:27 they're interested in you know 1:30 mobilizing their own voters and in you 1:33 know showing that the other party is 1:35 ineffective and either corrupt or you 1:39 know not up to the job so the context is 1:42 partisan polarization what's at stake 1:44 for four members in especially the 1:47 Senate is a lot I think 1:50 the elections this coming year for the 1:54 senators that are up for re-election 1:56 they will be closely fought in quite a 1:59 few states in quite a few key states and 2:02 I think that the impeachment and 2:06 potential trial in the Senate those 2:08 processes are going to be front and 2:10 center in the re-election campaigns this 2:12 this coming year so you you mentioned 2:16 that we're really close to an election 2:18 here so we're about a year from the 2:20 election how does that kind of proximity 2:23 to a presidential election as well as 2:25 members of both the House and the Senate 2:27 kind of up for grabs impact some of 2:30 what's going on in the decision-making 2:31 right now 2:32 well it's front and center to the 2:36 calculations of every single member of 2:38 Congress and to the president himself 2:41 he's there they're thinking about every 2:45 utterance they make and every decision 2:47 they make inside of committees and every 2:49 decision that they make to talk to the 2:52 media they're thinking about how this 2:55 affects the elections in 2020 and the 3:01 you know the the as I said the stakes 3:04 are very high as you know the the the 3:10 the process requires that two-thirds of 3:13 the Senate would be would have to 3:15 approve removing the president from 3:17 office well the the Republicans that are 3:22 would be required to vote to get to the 3:26 two-thirds there's quite a few 3:29 Republican senators that are up for 3:31 re-election that are up in tough 3:33 reelection fights and they're going to 3:37 have to make some difficult decisions 3:39 but I think it's a very tall order to 3:43 think that the the the this this the 3:47 elections that are going to get the 3:48 two-thirds over the hump to remove Trump 3:50 from office are in states that are going 3:53 to look favorably on removing Trump from 3:57 office so I think that 3:59 you know as things are today it's very 4:04 difficult to imagine to get that a 4:07 two-thirds vote would happen in the 4:08 Senate things can change history can 4:10 move in in strange and unpredictable 4:13 ways but currently the that two-thirds 4:19 threshold is a very steep hill to climb 4:21 for people who who would like to see the 4:25 president removed from office so your so 4:27 this two-thirds threshold that's a lot 4:29 of people that's a lot of votes they 4:32 have to kind of change and and kind of 4:34 think about this maybe a little bit 4:36 differently so I know that one of the 4:38 conversations that people have been 4:39 having is this political kind of 4:41 calculus between representing say your 4:44 your your parties views versus 4:46 representing that of your constituency 4:48 and there may be overlaps between those 4:50 but can you speak a little bit more to 4:52 that tension between those two groups 4:54 sure I mean the the senators who are in 4:58 an election in states where they're 5:00 closely Republican Democrat they feel 5:05 those cross pressures very deeply and 5:08 this will likely be the case if in fact 5:12 the house in peaches and it goes to a 5:14 trial in the Senate the senators that 5:17 are in states that may you know in a in 5:20 a tide may flip from one party to the 5:24 other those senators will feel a lot of 5:27 cross pressure because of course their 5:29 parties you know the Republican Party 5:31 will want them to hold the line but it 5:34 may be that the senator worries that he 5:37 or she may not be reelected if they if 5:39 that if that senator doesn't vote for 5:42 removing the president from office so 5:43 you know when you have states that are 5:45 kind of again knife's edge between 5:48 Republican and Democrat they're going to 5:50 feel that tension between party and 5:52 constituency very very keenly so we have 5:56 a two-party system here how does that 5:58 impact something like an 6:01 human process yeah well we not only have 6:05 a two-party system we have a system 6:08 where the different branches of the 6:10 government can be controlled by 6:11 different parties and in fact within the 6:13 Congress you have one party controlling 6:14 the Senate and one party controlling the 6:16 house so the the process of impeachment 6:22 is part of a process where if the 6:26 Congress or even one of the chambers is 6:28 controlled by the party that is not the 6:30 party the president uses investigations 6:35 uses trials uses you know certain kinds 6:40 of high profile processes to kind of 6:46 embarrass the other party to make the 6:49 other party look an effective corrupt 6:51 indifferent to voters needs and you see 6:55 this throughout the last you know half a 6:59 century that the party that doesn't 7:01 control the presidency but when they 7:03 have control of one of the houses they 7:05 use the reins of power within those 7:09 chambers to to investigate the president 7:12 and they did that to Brock Obama they 7:14 get it to george w bush and they get it 7:16 to bill clinton and you can go back and 7:17 back that's not to deny any specific 7:21 investigation or impeachment process as 7:23 legitimate or illegitimate it's just to 7:26 say that it's it's part of our times 7:28 that that we have two parties they use 7:32 the reins of government to go after each 7:36 other and i'm not sure that's a good 7:38 thing for the american people or for the 7:42 people their constituents of the 7:44 individual members but that's the system 7:46 we're in and the two-party system makes 7:49 that even more likely okay well kind of 7:53 expanding out the scope of things here a 7:55 little bit so i know a lot of your work 7:57 considers comparative politics and and 7:59 other areas outside of the US so how 8:03 does our impeachment process and kind of 8:05 how we deal with something like this 8:06 compared to that of you 8:08 another country for example well many of 8:11 the countries around the world that are 8:13 long-standing democracies are 8:14 parliamentary democracies and the 8:16 executive is responsible directly to the 8:20 Parliament the there's two common ways 8:25 that an executive say a prime minister 8:27 or Chancellor would be removed would be 8:30 either that that person's political 8:32 party decides not to keep that person as 8:36 the leader of that party and that and so 8:40 you have someone like Margaret Thatcher 8:42 being being removed from the being the 8:46 head of the Conservative Party in 8:47 Britain and being replaced by John Major 8:49 this is a while ago but that's simply 8:51 within the political party and that's 8:53 one way to remove an executive of a 8:55 country but also a more another common 8:58 way is that you can have what's called a 9:01 confidence vote in a parliamentary 9:02 system where there's a particular vote 9:04 that if the executives policy fails 9:10 there's a there's a new a new set of 9:12 elections that come come about so 9:14 elections aren't on a regular cycle but 9:16 are happen when the Parliament so-called 9:18 Falls which means that they vote against 9:20 the executives policies so removing an 9:24 executive from power can happen simply 9:27 by voting against voting a lack of 9:31 confidence in the executive and then 9:33 having a new set of elections so other 9:36 other systems especially parliamentary 9:38 systems have processes whereby 9:42 executives can be removed now every as 9:46 far as I know every truly democratic 9:49 system with the president elected 9:51 president has some means of removing the 9:52 president from power that can be some in 9:55 some countries the the Parliament itself 9:58 can start proceedings to remove it they 10:01 might involve the courts their various 10:03 mechanisms the american-style 10:06 impeachment process is actually I 10:09 wouldn't say it I think I don't think 10:11 it's unique but it's unusual it's also 10:13 hard I mean to get two-thirds of both 10:15 chambers of Congress to be able to 10:18 remove a president from power it's a 10:20 very you know it's a tall order and 10:22 so it's I think on the range of what's 10:26 out there around the world I think it's 10:28 it's a it's a high bar yeah absolutely 10:31 thank you for that example so just 10:34 keeping a broad question here at the end 10:36 is there anything else you think that 10:38 our teach out participants could gain to 10:41 understand about the impeachment process 10:45 yeah I think that you know the the 10:49 process is was originally designed to 10:55 deal with situations where I think the 11:01 founders thought of it this way where 11:04 much of the people participating in 11:10 politics in Washington or in the Capitol 11:12 felt uncomfortable with the president 11:15 and I think the idea was that this would 11:17 be sort of people from all parties in 11:21 all persuasions would believe that the 11:23 president had acted I was lying the 11:26 situation right now is it's extremely 11:29 partisan and the even the legitimacy of 11:35 the process that we're going through 11:37 right now is subject to partisan 11:40 disagreement even the you know within 11:46 the two sides if you want to think about 11:48 the two sides as the two parties there 11:52 are people on the Republican side that 11:54 actually are hopeful that impeachment 11:57 happens and happens quickly which is a 11:59 strange thing although of course they 12:01 hoped that he would survive in the 12:02 Senate there are people on the 12:04 Democratic side who who wish the 12:09 impeachment would slow down drag-out go 12:12 into the election season or others so 12:14 within the parties there's disagreement 12:16 but fundamentally whether the process is 12:20 legitimate whether the process should 12:23 happen whether it's exactly the way that 12:27 the founders intended the process all of 12:31 those things are now subject to partisan 12:34 disagreement and debate 12:35 and so I don't think in the previous 12:39 times we've had impeachment that we've 12:43 ever faced this kind of fundamental 12:46 division about the process itself even 12:49 the Clinton and preached impeachment 12:51 wasn't about the process I think in the 12:54 end the partisan differences were about 12:57 whether what he did merited impeachment 13:01 sure 13:01 and in Nixon it surely wasn't about the 13:04 process this is this he goes this sort 13:09 of unravels back to just the beginning 13:13 of the process itself and that has 13:15 become infused with partisan difference 13:17 and so we're in a very strange and 13:20 difficult time and you know I I don't I 13:25 I don't think it's the way things should 13:28 be I am I think most people in my 13:32 profession would think that step number 13:34 one when you have a functioning 13:36 political system you can disagree about 13:39 a lot of things but you should at least 13:41 agree on the processes by which we elect 13:45 people we hold people accountable we 13:47 make laws we decide on their 13:49 constitutionality 13:51 we're fraying in that and that's that's 13:54 a weird and strange time sure well it 13:56 sounds like we have some pretty large 13:58 questions that we're so we're all 13:59 grappling with great well thank you Ken 14:02 so much for joining us as part of the 14:04 teacher all right and thank you for 14:06 joining us in a segment we'll look 14:08 forward to continuing the conversation 14:09 about impeachment and other parts of 14:11 this teacher