AHC: George Washington still revered, but impeachment/removal relatively common in U.S.

And it may not be that hard. Countries do tend to revere and idolize their founders.

And by relatively common, let's say impeachment and removal is successfully performed by Congress between three and six times in the 1800s.
 
The basic problem is that conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds majority--which means that although one could *impeach* for partisan reasons, only rarely will there be sufficient votes to convict in such cases. And lots of impeachments followed by Senate acquittals will simply tend to discredit the process. That's why I argue at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/yKu2GBHp9uw/I9KSJcWjJW8J that even if Smauel Chase had been convicted, in the long run the impeachment process would not have been an effective weapon against the Supreme Court.
 
We could run two tracts:

(1) Both impeachment and removal could be by majority, with a modest tradition that it needs to be for a pretty good reason. Of the nature of malfeasance in office, rather than specific criminal statute, or

(2) A tradition develops, much like firing a head basketball coach, such that if things are going poorly, even a third to a half of a president's own party will vote against him.
 
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