Vice President Mike Pence appealed to Senate Democrats to follow the example of a 19th-century senator who bucked party loyalty to vote in favor of acquitting President Andrew Johnson at his impeachment trial.
“The question naturally arises: Who, among the Senate Democrats, will stand up to the passions of their party this time? Who will stand up against ‘legislative mob rule’ and for the rule of law? Who will be the 2020 Profile in Courage?” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal piece published shortly after the Senate took up House Democrats’ articles of impeachment.
With senators expected to follow party lines in deciding whether to remove Trump from office, the president’s allies believe persuading one or two Democrats to break ranks and vote “not guilty” would provide an important moral victory.
In making his case, Pence cited the story of Sen. Edmund Ross of Kansas, as recounted by President John F. Kennedy in his 1956 book, Profiles in Courage.
Republicans had taken against Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat, for his post-Civil War methods for bringing Southern states back into the fold. They found a weapon in the Tenure of Office Act, which forbade the president from removing an approved executive-branch officer without congressional authorization.
He was impeached by the House after replacing Edwin Stanton with Gen. Ulysses S. Grant as War Secretary.
When Ross and several of his Republican colleagues expressed concern about finding Johnson guilty in the Senate, the result was a campaign of pressure, according to Kennedy’s account. “They were warned in the party press, harangued by their constituents, and sent dire warnings threatening political ostracism and even assassination,” he wrote.
Ross stuck to his conviction and voted to acquit when the vote came on May 16, 1868.
Pence writes that history vindicated his stance, with Kennedy concluding that Ross had taken a valiant stand against “mob rule” — providing what he calls a “striking parallel” for today’s senators.
“Then as now, a political faction has forced a partisan impeachment through the House in the heat of an argument over a difference in policy,” Pence wrote. “Then as now, this faction has cheapened the impeachment process, which the Founders believed should be reserved for only the most grave abuses of the public trust.”
