What happened when Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached regarding future office eligibility?
Executive summary
When the House impeached Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, neither president was convicted by the Senate, so neither was removed from office nor barred from holding future federal office; Johnson was acquitted by one vote and Clinton was acquitted on both articles with Senate votes that fell short of the two‑thirds threshold impeachment-timelines-history-2019-9" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[1] [2] [3]. Under the Constitution, disqualification from future federal office is a separate statutory consequence that the Senate may impose only after a conviction, and in practice the Senate has rarely used that power—mostly against judges removed from office—not presidents [4] [5] [6].
1. The constitutional framework for removal and disqualification
The Constitution makes the House responsible for bringing impeachment articles and the Senate the sole court to try impeachments, with conviction requiring a two‑thirds Senate vote; the only penalties the Senate can impose on conviction are removal from office and a subsequent vote to disqualify the individual from holding any future federal office (Article I/Article II as discussed in congressional analyses) [4] [6]. Legal commentators and institutional histories emphasize that disqualification is an additional step the Senate may take after convicting and removing a federal official, not an automatic consequence of impeachment alone [5] [6].
2. What happened to Andrew Johnson on eligibility for future office
Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868 and tried in the Senate, where he was acquitted by a single vote short of the two‑thirds required for conviction; because the Senate did not convict him, it did not remove him and therefore did not—and constitutionally could not—exercise the additional power to bar him from future federal office [7] [1] [8]. Historical accounts stress that the acquittal reinforced the idea that Congress should not remove a president merely for political disagreement, and Johnson therefore retained his eligibility for future federal office by virtue of never being convicted [8] [9].
3. What happened to Bill Clinton on eligibility for future office
Bill Clinton was impeached by the House in late 1998 and acquitted by the Senate in February 1999; the Senate votes on the two articles fell well short of the two‑thirds threshold—on perjury the Senate vote split 45 guilty to 55 not guilty, and on obstruction the vote likewise failed to reach conviction—so Clinton remained in office and was not subject to removal or disqualification from future federal office [2] [1] [3]. The Miller Center and contemporaneous reporting underscore that, because there was no conviction, the Senate had no occasion to consider or vote on any additional disqualification [2].
4. Historical practice and rarity of disqualification after conviction
Across U.S. history, the Senate has rarely used the disqualification power: only in a small number of cases—principally involving removed federal judges—has the Senate taken the additional step of barring individuals from ever holding federal office again, and the House history of impeachment notes that presidents impeached but acquitted (Johnson, Clinton, Trump) remained eligible because conviction did not occur [5] [3]. Scholarly treatments and legal primers reiterate that removal plus disqualification requires an affirmative Senate conviction first; scholars debate the contours of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and whether disqualification could be politically motivated, but the formal mechanism is clear and was not triggered in either Johnson’s or Clinton’s trials [4] [6].
5. Consequences, political signaling, and unresolved questions
The practical takeaway from the Johnson and Clinton cases is that impeachment by the House alone does not affect a former or sitting president’s eligibility for federal office—the decisive moment is a Senate conviction and any subsequent disqualification vote—yet both impeachments carried strong political and reputational consequences that shaped public debate about removal standards and presidential accountability [8] [2]. Sources differ on the normative question of when disqualification should be used, and while the constitutional text and historical practice are clear about the procedural prerequisites, debates persist in law and politics about the proper scope of impeachment, removal, and the political incentives that drive Congress to pursue or avoid the disqualification remedy [4] [9].