The Hamilton Test: What Makes an Impeachment Vote “Too Partisan”?

This has been a good week for Alexander Hamilton. Fresh from his triumph as Broadway’s leading statesman, he has become required reading for anyone interested in this week’s impeachment drama. This is because, taken together, Hamilton’s Federalist essays #65 and #66 — constitute the most important statement that we have about impeachment from anyone who took part in creating the Constitution.

The key takeaway from Hamilton this week seems to be that it is really bad to impeach a president in a partisan fashion. “A partisan impeachment vote is exactly what the Framers feared,” trumpeted famous Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. “It is almost as if this Founding Father were looking down at the House vote from heaven and describing what transpired this week.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy agreed: “This is the day that Alexander Hamilton feared and warned would come!”

Both Dershowitz and McCarthy were paraphrasing the same passage in Federalist #65, which has become a main exhibit in the Republican case against impeachment:

“In many cases [impeachment] will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the…