About this time 50 years ago, a Lake County congressman stepped up and voted to impeach an American president. Last week, another county congressman urged another president to end his re-election bid.
It was strange times in July 1974, just as we’re on atypical ground this election year. This year’s unusual election cycle became more abnormal with the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump over the weekend.
For the two congressmen — one a Republican, the other a Democrat — it took grit to run counter to pressure from their respective political parties.
But that’s what U.S. Rep. Robert McClory, R-Lake Bluff, did on July 30, 1974, and what U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Highland Park, did last week. Two men from different sides of the aisle, but with the nation’s pith at the heart of their decisions.
McClory played a pivotal role in the Watergate impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon. Schneider, vice chair of the New Democrat Coalition, the party’s largest caucus in the House of Representatives, has joined so far about a dozen congressional colleagues in calling for President Joe Biden to suspend his campaign since his poor debate performance last month and concerns over his age.
If he were to end his re-election quest, it would allow Democrats to choose a new presidential candidate at the party’s convention next month in Chicago. If he doesn’t quit the campaign trail, he will continue to be the party’s standard bearer in the Nov. 5 election.
McClory, who died in 1988 at age 80, represented most of Lake County for 20 years, from 1963 to 1983, in the old 13th Congressional District. Schneider’s current 10th Congressional District mirrors much of the former 13th.
In the turbulent year of 1974, McClory, second-ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, was in the limelight as the impeachment of Nixon grew closer to reality. The judiciary panel was debating drafting three articles of impeachment against Nixon. McClory had been a staunch supporter of the Republican president re-elected to his second four-year term in 1972, but felt he had no partisan obligation to defend him.
During the final impeachment debate on July 30, 1974, McClory introduced the third article of impeachment which charged the president with contempt of Congress for defying eight Judiciary Committee subpoenas. It was said at the time that when Nixon “lost McClory” he knew his presidency was near its end.
Which was true. Republican senators told Nixon they would vote to impeach and convict him of obstruction of justice in the Watergate break-in cover-up, which would have led to his removal from office. Rather than face that conclusion, Nixon left office on Aug. 9.
It is uncertain if 81-year-old President Biden will follow Schneider’s suggestion on July 11 that he, “heroically pass the torch to a new generation of leadership” and drop out of the presidential race. Two other Illinois Democrat congressmen, Mike Quigley of Chicago, who represents a slice of Lake County, and Eric Sorenson of Moline, also have called on Biden to stand down.
“We are faced with a stark choice: Be resigned to slog through this election praying we can successfully defend our democracy, or enthusiastically embrace a vibrant vision for our future, building on the extraordinary foundation President Biden has created for our nation over the past four years,” Schneider, an early 2020 Biden supporter, said in a statement. “I choose the latter.”
Like other Democrats, the congressman said, “stakes in this election could not be higher.” He argued “A second Trump administration will tear apart our economy, further devastate reproductive freedom, threaten our national security and degrade our vital leadership role in the world order that we helped establish after World War II.”
If Biden were to withdraw from the race — something he has not indicated he is contemplating — he wouldn’t be the first Democrat president to do so. Lyndon Johnson did so in 1968.
The growing move to oust Biden as the Democrat presidential candidate plays against the backdrop of the Republican National Convention which opened this week in Milwaukee, 40 miles north of Lake County. Wisconsin is one of a few states that could swing the 2024 presidential election.
The 78-year-old Trump is expected to be crowned the party’s presidential candidate with some 50,000 GOP convention delegates and media on hand at Fiserv Forum in the Beer City’s downtown at the party confab being held through Thursday. Democrats fear a Trump victory in November, with Schneider calling the former president, “an absolute threat to the very core of our nation.”
Is it time for Biden to decline another term? Many of our federal leaders are as old, if not older than Biden, such as Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, 82, of Kentucky, and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who will turn 91 in September.
For senior citizens, age is a state of mind. For Biden, it’s become a defining moment, like that facing President Nixon during the summer of 1974.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
sellenews@gmail.com
Twitter: @sellenews