The 2000 presidential election between Clinton’s vice president, Al Gore, and Texas governor George W. Bush, a Republican and the son of former president George Bush, was one of the closest and most disputed elections in United States history. The morning after Election Day dawned with Florida’s results too close to call, leaving both candidates short of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. After a mandatory machine recount showed Bush winning the state by mere hundreds of votes out of some 6 million cast, Gore requested hand recounts of ballots in four heavily Democratic counties. A five-week legal battle ensued, during which state and federal courts considered a misleading ballot design, challenges to the manual recounts underway, and other election irregularities. On December 12 the Supreme Court of the United States effectively sealed Bush’s victory by ruling against further manual recounts (see Disputed Presidential Election of 2000). Bush became the first presidential candidate since Benjamin Harrison in 1888 to win the electoral vote—and thus the presidency—but lose the popular vote. Gore won the popular vote by more than 500,000 votes out of more than 105 million cast. Bush also was the first son of a president to win the White House since John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, became president in 1825.
Bush’s victory marked the first time in nearly 50 years that Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. In the first months of his administration, Bush advocated a $1.6-trillion tax cut over ten years to return some of the federal surplus to taxpayers and stimulate a slowing economy. He largely achieved this goal in mid-2001, when Congress passed a $1.35- trillion tax cut. Around this same time, however, Bush suffered a setback when Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, a Republican, announced he would become an independent. Jeffords’s decision shifted the balance of power in the Senate to the Democrats.
Just eight months into his presidency, Bush and the nation faced a terrible new challenge. On September 11, 2001, terrorists crashed hijacked commercial jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, in New York City, and the Pentagon, outside Washington, D.C. (see September 11 Attacks). The coordinated terrorist strike destroyed the World Trade Center and killed more than 3,000 people. United States authorities soon identified the al-Qaeda terrorist network of Saudi exile Osama bin Laden as the group responsible for the attack. Bush declared that destroying al-Qaeda and preventing future terrorist attacks would be the top priorities of his administration. In the following months, a U.S.-led coalition force launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, where bin Laden and al-Qaeda were based. Congress also passed, and Bush signed, antiterrorism legislation that significantly expanded the federal government’s surveillance powers.A strong showing by Republicans in the 2002 midterm elections—fueled in part by Bush’s high approval ratings—enabled them to recapture control of the Senate. Combined with an enlarged Republican majority in the House, the achievement was expected to allow Bush to more easily enact his legislative agenda and secure approval of his judicial appointees.
In 2002 the Bush administration turned its attention to Iraq, claiming that the country supported terrorist organizations and that it illegally possessed weapons of mass destruction. Although Iraq agreed to the return of United Nations (UN) weapons inspectors, U.S. authorities charged that Iraq was not cooperating fully and was hiding banned weapons. In March 2003, despite opposition from some members of the UN Security Council, a U.S.-led military coalition invaded Iraq with the goals of destroying the country’s banned weapons and deposing Iraq’s authoritarian president, Saddam Hussein. By mid-April the Bush administration declared that Hussein’s regime was no longer in control of the country.
CHECKS AND BALANCES - IMPEACHMENT
The House of Representatives . . . shall have the sole power of impeachment. . . . The
Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments. — United States Constitution, Article 1
Impeachment means bringing charges of wrong doing against the President or other government officials .
According to this passage from the Constitution both houses of Congress have specific duties in the impeachment process.
The House of Representatives impeaches the President i.e. formally charged the President for wrongdoing. The Senate then becomes a court and tries the President. If the Senate finds the President guilt, he will be removed from office.
Only two Presidents have been impeached so far in our nation's history - Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
President Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974 before
the House could impeach him. However, no President has ever been removed from office though this process. In the
case of Johnson and Clinton, the senate failed to convict either men.
In 1865 Andrew Johnson became President of the United States following the assassination of President Lincoln. President Johnson soon ran into problems with Congress over policies to reconstruct the South following the Civil war. To limit the power of the President,
Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, a law that prevented the President from firing a member of his cabinet without approval of the Senate.
But according to the Construction, the President must seek "the advise and consent of the senate" only when he is hiring such officials. President Johnson saw the new law as a deliberate attempt by Congress to limit his power. He then defied the law by firing his Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, without consulting with Congress.
Congress immediately accused the President of breaking
the law and the House of Representatives impeached Johnson. Fortunately for Johnson, his presidency was saved by only one vote - the Senate fell short of removing the President from office by a single vote.