In addition to ruining regular order in the House, Dennis Hastert was speaker when the impeachment procedure became a purely political and partisan tool. There will always be some political aspect to any impeachment proceeding, there always has been. But never before was it so blatantly political. There was no threat, real or imagined, to our government or to our democracy because Bill Clinton had a sexual affair with a White House intern. Nor did his lie about it within a deposition for a case that was dismissed as without merit, qualify as an egregious case of perjury or obstruction worthy of impeachment.
 

But so thirsty for partisan scalps were the members of the Republican caucus, so great was their hubris, that they laid claim to this as a high crime and misdemeanor. No matter that so many of them, Bob Livingston, proposed as speaker to replace Gingrich (also an adulterer), Dan Burton, Helen Chenoweth and Henry Hyde, the chief manager of the Senate trial were all guilty of infidelity as well. And Hastert himself knew he was guilty of far greater sexual crimes. But this was their opportunity to destroy a Democratic president and they gladly took it in order to take what they could not win at the ballot box.
 

However, worse than their attempt to destroy a man, was that their actions severely damaged the impeachment process, making it more difficult to use in the future. Impeachment should be a serious step, taken only in response to the most grave actions by a president that threaten our democracy. The Constitution dictates that it be used only for acts of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” It should never have been used to settle a political score. The result was that a few years later, the threat of this tool could not be used to rein in George Bush’s war-making ability or to prevent his office from further exposing serving CIA operatives. Nancy Pelosi knew her caucus and the nation’s mood when she took impeachment off the table in 2007.