The Impossibility of Impeachment

Polling outfits routinely ask historians and political scientists to rate the presidents from worst to best. It's an inherently frustrating exercise. Does “greatness” depend on what a chief executive accomplished or instead on his ability to bend Congress to his will and influence his successors? How should we evaluate a president like Lyndon Johnson, who signed such momentous—and durable—laws as those ensuring civil rights and launching Medicare, but who also sent hundreds of thousands of Americans to kill countless numbers of Vietnamese in a civil war that was none of our business? A scholar's rating depends, in large part, on a judgment of what a president should have done as well as what he did. Evaluating those choices is a more meaningful enterprise than using political history to dash off a click-happy list of likes and dislikes.