Lawfare on impeachment in the context of the contemporary presidency

Bob Bauer (former White House Counsel to President Obama) observes:

The presidency in its current form is, in many respects, something of a constitutional absurdity. We entrust the occupant to wisely exercise vast powers, but the barriers to entry into competition for this office have been virtually eliminated. Provided that he or she meets basic constitutional qualifications—for example, age—anyone can run. The aspirants are not required to submit to any formal screening or peer review. The political parties may have once performed a function like that, but now they do not: They host the event but have no control over the invitation list because a candidate wishing to participate can invite himself. Now it is largely up to the press and the operation of fierce political competition to ferret out disqualifying information, and to get this job done in the compressed period after a candidate becomes serious and undergoes the fullest, most sustained scrutiny. We hope for the best.

Even the availability of resources limits the field only so much. Often a little press buzz and a good showing in Iowa, in whatever order that occurs, are enough to launch a relatively low-budget and improbable candidacy well into the later stages of the primary election process—and sometimes all the way to the nomination.

So informal mechanisms for judging worthiness are all there is to go on, and these are only so reliable. It is precisely the candidate with little prior experience in public life and the scrutiny that goes with it who may stand the best chance—as an “outsider”—of advancing well into the process.

They didn't contemplate such things back in the 18th Century, when the Constitution was formulated and adopted as the foundational laws of the land:

While not a step to be taken lightly, or routinely, the “dreadfulness” of removal can be gauged only with reference to the office as it stands, in relation to the processes by which candidates compete for it. If someone not “viable” does slip through the crazy-quilt process, then the impeachment process is a safeguard, the use of which should not stand or fall on whether the new president committed his crimes and misdemeanors before taking the oath of office.

Of course, not all 18th-century assumptions and precedents built on them need be discarded, but there is also no virtue in disregarding the 21st-century realities of institutional and political change. And while impeachment might well remain an extraordinary remedy, it does not follow that it must be viewed as inevitably a constitutionally catastrophic outcome to be avoided if at all possible. In fact, the constitutional catastrophe could well be an entirely outdated understanding of impeachment. This is a useful question to be debated now, and it is an important one without regard to the specific case of Donald Trump.