Alexander Hamilton's Case For Impeachment

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., walks into a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2019, where U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is being interviewed for the impeachment inquiry.

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

October 22, 2019

Updated August 07, 2023

Harvard Business School historian Nancy Koehn and Harvard Kennedy School professor David Gergen say that when Alexander Hamilton argued for impeachment powers, he envisioned a historical moment like the one we are in.

Koehn and Gergen joined Boston Public Radio Tuesday to talk about the history of the impeachment clause as the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump continues.

"[Alexander] Hamilton wanted a strong presidency, but that power had to be checked with a kind of cord of last resort - the impeachment process," Koehn said. "Hamilton wrote about the possibility of demagogues rising in power, and wrote about the impeachment process in his Federalist papers as a way to check demagogues."

"When Ron Chernow says in the Washington Post that Hamilton envisioned someone like Trump, that's a very apt statement," she continued.

"It's remarkable how good a fit the fears of Hamilton were with what we're seeing today," Gergen said.

Koehn is an historian at the Harvard Business School where she holds the James E. Robison chair of Business Administration. Her forthcoming book is "Forged in Crisis: The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times."

David Gergen is a Professor of Public Service at Harvard’s Kennedy School, where he founded the Center for Public Leadership. He’s also a CNN Senior Political Analyst. Previously, he worked for presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton.