Regarding Impeachment: If President Donald Trump were impeached and Mike Pence became president, how long would his term be? Would it be for 4 years or would there still be a 2020 election?

President Andrew Johnson being served with the summons of impeachment by Congressional Sergeant-at-Arms George T. Brown, as sketched by Harper's Weekly in 1867. (Library of Congress)

If President Donald Trump were impeached and Mike Pence became president, how long would his term be? Would it be for 4 years or would there still be a 2020 election?

First, let’s clear up certain misconceptions that are laid bare by the wording of the question.

1. Impeachment does not mean “automatic removal of a Federal official by Congressional fiat.” It is a trial under specific conditions that have to be met
2. Impeachment only results in removing a President or other official if, as implied by the term “trial,” if he or (eventually, she) is found guilty by the Senate

It’s now late July 2019, and the 2020 election cycle is currently underway. As in, there is a group of aspiring Democratic Presidential candidates already jockeying for prominence and a decent shot of winning the nomination of their party next summer. So, even with rumors of possible impeachment, the campaign is already on.

Can Donald Trump be impeached during an election cycle? Constitutionally, there's no prohibition against it. However, given the logistics and the current makeup of the Senate, it's highly unlikely. Photo Credit: NBC. 

Now, you have to understand that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is not enthusiastic about impeaching President Donald J. Trump. At a basic human level, considering what the Mueller Report has laid out regarding Russia’s intervention in our 2016 election and the Trump Campaign’s obvious reaping of the benefits thereof, plus the damning evidence that many campaign officials and members of the Trump Organization had links to Putin’s operatives, I’m almost certain that she would like nothing more than to impeach the 45th President.

Yet, for all the barbs tossed at her by Republicans, Speaker Pelosi is a savvy politician who suspects that impeachment, while being emotionally satisfying to the rank-and-file of the Democratic Party, is not a guaranteed means to an end. In this case, the end is the removal from office of one of the worst Chief Executives in U.S. history.

You see, although the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives (the lower chamber of our bicameral Congress), the Republican Party has a chokehold on the Senate, which is the upper house. And in an impeachment proceeding, though the House of Representatives is responsible for beginning the process, it is the Senate that is tasked with the actual trial and conviction.

And as long as the Senate is led by Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the Republican Majority Leader, you can be assured that Trump will be acquitted in a trial if it ever came to that.

In the 230-year-history of the Presidency of the United States, Congress has voted a couple of times to impeach a President. Only two Presidents (Andrew Johnson in 1867; Bill Clinton in 1999) have ever been tried by the Senate; both were acquitted by the Senate. A third President, Richard M. Nixon, resigned in 1974 when it became apparent that there was going to be a successful vote to impeach him over the Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup.

As I said before, though impeachment is based on constitutional law, it’s essentially a political exercise. And all things being equal, as long as the Republicans hold the Senate, a conviction is not likely.

But, let’s say that Moscow Mitch and his cronies in the Senate decided to put country ahead of party and voted to convict Trump, thus removing him from the White House before the 2020 election. What then?

Mike Pence would then become the President of the United States, as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. He would then serve the balance of Trump’s term, then probably run for election in November of 2020.

If Pence won the election, he could serve for four years, then run again in 2024.

If he lost in 2020, he could possibly make a second bid in 2024, especially if the Democrats won by only a small margin or, as Trump did in 2016, via an Electoral College victory.

The election itself would still go on.

I mean, seriously. Doesn’t anyone study history anymore?

We held Presidential elections in wartime before, starting with the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln won his tragically abbreviated second term in 1864, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won his fourth and last term during the last months of World War II, and Richard Nixon ran and won two elections during the Vietnam War. Closer to 2019, George W. Bush and Barack Obama ran for President while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were being fought, and the current President also won his race during wartime.

So if wars don’t stop elections, neither would an impeachment.

Photo Credit: © 2012 20th Century Fox Film Corp. 

But, dear readers, the impeachment of Donald J. Trump is as likely as me getting a date with Charlize Theron.