| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. The House of Representatives delivered the article of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate Monday evening, and after some time for everyone to make their cases, we're going to have at least a brief trial of a former president. Republicans are converging on an appeal to process, claiming that a post-presidential impeachment is improper. I suppose that's better than actively supporting Trump's attempts to undermine U.S. democracy by promoting his baseless stolen-election fantasy and provoking the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, but they're not fooling anyone. At least I hope not. I hate to pick on Missouri Senator Josh Hawley when he's already getting well-deserved grief elsewhere, but c'mon. Really? Hawley: "I think that this impeachment effort is, I mean, I think it's blatantly unconstitutional. It's a really, really, really dangerous precedent." What could that possibly mean? Dangerous? There are two kinds of impeachments: legitimate and illegitimate. We don't have to worry about setting a precedent that supports the illegitimate kind, right? If a rogue House decides next week to impeach former president George W. Bush because Democrats don't like his brushwork (he paints, you know) — a clearly illegitimate use of the impeachment power — they aren't going to care what the precedents are about impeaching a former president. Then there are two kinds of former presidents alive today: One-term and two-term. Only a one-termer is technically eligible for a future term. Still, it seems to me there couldn't be any serious harm, and certainly not "really, really, really dangerous" harm, to impeach and convict a former two-term president. Suppose we find out tomorrow that Bush and Barack Obama were … well, given where we are, I'd rather not construct this particular hypothetical. But something bad, and the House responds by impeaching both of them. Senate convictions, especially with bans on holding future office, wouldn't be entirely symbolic, since they could take away post-presidential perks and prevent running for Senate or serving as secretary of state. Overall, however, such actions would be almost entirely symbolic. It's hard to see the menace in that, even if one wants to argue that it's based on a misreading of the Constitution. So we're down to one-term former presidents who have committed some serious violation. Even in that case, there are important disincentives for impeachment and conviction. To begin with, the two-thirds vote required for conviction demands either a massive partisan advantage in the Senate, the kind that's rare in the nation's history, or a bipartisan vote that could only take place for a violation that was serious, indeed. It's not just that. We can see right now that impeachment of the outgoing president is a distraction from the agenda of the new president and his or her party in Congress. They're not going to do it just for fun. By what standard is it so dangerous to bar from further office a defeated one-term president who has created a legitimate case for impeachment, one so serious that Congress wants to move ahead despite the obstacles and disincentives and is somehow able to muster at least 67 votes in the Senate? Suppose it is a mistake in that situation to prevent the electorate from changing their minds and electing this unpopular, disgraced president to a second term after all. Is it really a significant danger only avoided by closing the impeachment window as soon as the next president takes office? Or is it, more realistically, a circumstance so unusual that it's unlikely to happen again, and wouldn't matter a whole lot if it did? To be sure, the text of the Constitution doesn't settle the issue. A 20-year-old law review article by Brian Kalt of Michigan State University that supported the legality of impeaching former officials long before Trump appeared on the scene concluded that most, but not all, scholarly opinion holds that the Constitution allows these actions. Even if those arguments are incorrect, it's hard for me to see very much harm to the republic. It's just easier to pretend that Democrats (and some Republicans) are hijacking the impeachment process than it is to defend Trump's attempts to undermine the Constitution. So expect Hawley and company to spout plenty of the former, and precious little of the latter. 1. Hans Noel on the post-Trump Republicans. 2. Cheryl Ellenwood, Laura Evans, Raymond Foxworth, Carmela Roybal and Gabriel R. Sanchez at the Monkey Cage on Deb Haaland, President Joe Biden's nominee for interior secretary. 3. Chris Baylor at A House Divided on ranking presidents. 4. Steven Taylor on a proportional representation system for the U.S. 5. Josh Putnam on the Democrats' Iowa problem. 6. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O'Brien on the case against Trump. 7. And Adam Serwer on impeachment. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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