IMPEACHMENT IS BOTH THE CAUSE AND THE EFFECT OF A TOO-POWERFUL PRESIDENCY.

• Author: Ward, Katherine Mangu

BY FOCUSING ALL of its efforts on impeachment during a presidential campaign, Congress has given away the game: Its members are little more than pawns in a winner-take-all battle for the presidency and its vast and ever-growing powers. Worse, they seem to prefer it that way.

Impeachment is messy, like digging out the pit from an overripe peach. The formal process is difficult for Americans to comprehend. The criteria are blurry and debatable. It requires nearly everyone involved to perform some amount of hypocritical partisan contortionism. It's the bluntest of instruments in politics, and that's really saying something.

Because of this confusingly contingent nature of impeachment, many in Congress are currently extremely busy practicing "strategic silence." They're waiting to see whether the 58 percent of Americans who told Washington Post/Schar pollsters in early October that they support the impeachment inquiry will stick to their guns (and whether the number of likely Republican voters in their midst will grow larger).

But it is increasingly clear that, especially for party leadership in Congress, the game is worth the candle. The game is worth a whole candelabra, in fact. A chandelier, even.

Impeachments are becoming more frequent, with only one--of Andrew Johnson in 1868--in the first couple centuries of U.S. history and three (yes, we're counting Nixon) in the last 50 years. It's not a coincidence that the latter period has also seen unprecedented growth in the powers of the president and in the number of dollars and lives at his disposal.

Even the substance of the narrow matter at hand in 2019 demonstrates this dynamic. At issue in the impeachment inquiry--at least at press time, since these things have a tendency to develop quickly--is the implication of a quid pro quo offered to a foreign leader in a phone call with Donald Trump. Depending on your reading of the evidence, the president may or may not have intentionally given the impression that the price of U.S. military aid to Ukraine was some kind of dirt on a political rival, Joe Biden.

There are two ways to prevent this kind of alleged self-interested self-dealing from the White House. One option would be to elect a person of high moral character who also has a well-developed understanding of the rules and strictures that govern the office--someone who is inclined to respect those rules in letter and spirit as well as to honor the guidelines for transparency that allow other...