It should pursue the impeachment process only if there is evidence implicating that high standard. The Framers included specific provisions for impeachment in the Constitution itself because they understood that the most severe political remedy was necessary to remedy the most serious forms of public wrongdoing. Impeachment is a basic constitutional safeguard, designed both to correct harms to the system of government itself and to protect the people from ongoing malfeasance. Nothing less than the gravest executive wrongdoing can justify impeachment. The Constitution leaves lesser wrongs to the political process and to public opinion.
Presidential impeachment is thus a matter of incomparable gravity.
No matter, then, can be of higher political importance than our considering whether, in any given instance, this act of choice is to be undone, and the chosen president dismissed from office in disgrace. Everyone must shrink from this most drastic of measures. The Framers knew this. For that reason they framed the constitutional procedure with precision and specified grounds for impeachment with great care. They were familiar with English common law and parliamentary history and they borrowed the expression directly from the English law of impeachment.