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Bill Clinton was impeached primarily for criminal conduct: lying under oath and misleading a federal grand jury about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Nixon would have been impeached for a wide array of criminal acts, as well as abuses of power.

The only conduct that merits the drastic remedy of impeachment is that which subverts our system of government or renders the president unfit or unable to govern.

I've done more impeachments than anybody else in the history of the country.

Impeachment must not be a raw exercise of political power in which the House impeaches whoever it wishes for any reason it deems sufficient. Indeed, it is the solemn duty of all of the members of the House in any impeachment case to exercise their judgment faithfully within the confines established by our Constitution.

The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.

It is a historical fact that President Bush pushed this nation into a war that had little to do with apprehending terrorists. We did not seek an impeachment of President Bush because, as an executive, he had his authority.

Clinton's egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place.

Impeachment is not a remedy for private wrongs; it's a method of removing someone whose continued presence in office would cause grave danger to the nation.

I still believe the Lewinsky investigation was way off from the focus of what Whitewater was, which turned out to be nothing at the end of the process. And I think that there were people who were determined as political opponents to not allow his presidency to succeed.

Article II of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon was just the simple fact that he talked about and suggested the potential use of the IRS against one or two political opponents.