154 Presidential politics
appointments and treaties. The Supreme Court also stands as a potential
check to the power of the president, with the ability to pronounce presiden-
tial actions unconstitutional, as it did in 1952 in the steel seizure case. The
Constitution provides that the president may be impeached and removed
from office if guilty of treason, bribery or ‘other high Crimes and Misde-
meanours.’ Impeachment was a procedure used in Britain to remove the
King’s ministers, and abandoned at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
For a president to be impeached a resolution has to be passed by the House
of Representatives setting out the charges. The Senate with the Chief Justice
presiding then tries the president, and it requires a two-thirds vote of the
members present to convict. Two presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and
Bill Clinton in 1999 have been impeached; the latter because of sexual scan-
dals and the consequent charges that he committed perjury and abused the
powers of his office. Andrew Johnson escaped conviction by one vote and the
proceedings against Clinton failed because there was no majority of Sena-
tors to convict him. The threat of impeachment is taken very seriously by
presidents. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 when impeachment seemed im-
minent, and Ronald Reagan was threatened with possible impeachment over
the Iran–Contra affair.
The revelations of the illegal and improper behaviour of President Nixon
in the Watergate affair led Congress to pass the Ethics in Government Act
of 1978. The Act provided that if a complaint of irregularity is made to the
Attorney General a Special Prosecutor, or Independent Counsel, can be ap-
pointed to investigate the complaint and report to the Congress. The Act
covers the behaviour of the president, vice-president, members of the cabinet
and other senior officials, some seventy offices in all. After President Clinton’s
election in 1992 accusations were made about possible financial irregulari-
ties in a land transaction in Arkansas when he was governor. An Independent
Counsel, Kenneth Starr, was appointed to investigate the matter, and this led
into an examination of Clinton’s private life and his sexual behaviour. Starr’s
investigation took four years until he reported to the Congress in September
1998, and it was his report that led to the impeachment of the President.
Party chief and national leader
If the presidency is to exercise the leadership in national affairs that modern
conditions demand, its constitutional authority must be used in the context
of the extra-constitutional position of the president as a national and party
leader, in order to play a role not foreseen in the Constitution. The two sourc-
es of extra-constitutional power available to the president are the allegiance
of party supporters in Congress and in the country as a whole, and ‘pub-
lic opinion’. These two sources of power sometimes complement each other
and sometimes conflict. A skilful president may ring the changes of differing
combinations of public and party support, sometimes depending upon the
latter to attain limited aims which do not enjoy wide popular support, and at