An impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden? To me, it seems justified.

In the first 185 years of the American presidency, there was only one impeachment of a president. In the past 50, there have been four, with a fifth looming. If Joe Biden is impeached, it will mean that four of the ten most recent presidents experienced that treatment.

Are presidents more corrupt or prone to criminality now than they were in the first 185 years? I doubt it. What’s changed is the willingness of the U.S. House to use the impeachment process against adversaries in the White House.

I’ve come to believe that presidents should not be impeached unless there is a realistic possibility the Senate will convict them. Absent that realistic possibility, impeachments are mostly political theatre.

This is not to say they can’t serve a worthwhile purpose. They can serve two — enabling the House to express extreme disapproval of a president and bringing to light scandalous behavior.

But these purposes can be served nearly as well through other methods that suck up much less oxygen. The House can pass resolutions expressing its extreme disapproval and it can hold committee hearings to bring scandalous behavior to the public’s attention. The House select committee that investigated the events of January 6, 2021 certainly did that, albeit in a one-sided proceeding.

If we were to apply the standard I’ve just articulated to Joe Biden, the verdict would be that he should neither be impeached nor investigated for impeachment. There is no support among Democrats for impeaching Biden and in the event of impeachment, there is no chance of conviction by the Senate (and only a slim chance that a majority of Senators will vote to convict.)

An impeachment investigation might well strengthen the case for impeachment. However, there’s no chance it will cause Senate Democrats to vote to convict Biden.

But the standard I happen to prefer is not the standard that Congress applies these days. Of the four impeachments in the past 50 years, only the Nixon proceedings met that standard. The three most recent impeachments did not come close to meeting it.

Impeachment has become an almost routine political response to presidential scandal. There’s no reason why Biden should be exempt from that response.

What, then, should the standard for impeachment of Biden be? In my view, the requirement should be conduct that can reasonably be characterized as a “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” (that difficult-to-define phrase). In the case of an impeachment investigation, there should be a sound basis for suspecting the existence of such conduct. In addition, as a prudential matter, impeachment proceedings are best not initiated if they are likely to harm the party initiating them.

An impeachment inquiry is justified in Biden’s case because there is a sound basis for suspecting that he engaged in conduct that can reasonably be characterized as bribery or a high crime and misdemeanor. Speaker McCarthy says the impeachment inquiry will focus on whether Joe Biden benefited from his son’s business dealings with foreigners. If Biden did so benefit, that certainly can be characterized as a bribery or a high crime and misdemeanor. And as I view the evidence, there’s reason to suspect that Biden did.

But even if Biden didn’t benefit monetarily from his son’s dealings, using high office to enrich one or more family members can also plausibly be characterized as meeting the constitutional standard for impeachment. As I view the evidence there’s good reason to believe that Biden used his position as VP to help enrich his worthless son.

For these reasons, I think the predicate for an impeachment inquiry under current practice exists here. (There’s also the question of whether a president can be impeached for conduct committed before he attained that office. You can find a discussion of that question here.)

The tricky question is whether launching an impeachment inquiry would harm the Republicans. It might.

There’s real doubt as to whether enough House Republicans will vote to impeach Biden. If an impeachment investigation does not lead to an impeachment, it will be a victory for Biden and the Democrats.

Moreover, Biden and Democrats might win even if the House votes to impeach the president. The reason for the reluctance of some GOP House members to go down the impeachment road is this fact: There are 18 House Republicans who represent districts Biden carried in 2020. If impeachment is successful, it will mean that most of these members voted for it. Some will have put their reelection prospects in jeopardy. And given the GOP’s razor-thin House majority, this will mean that the Republican majority will be in jeopardy.

There are countervailing political calculations in the picture. They revolve around the need for Speaker McCarthy to keep the most conservative members of his caucus satisfied, especially with the upcoming battle over funding the federal government.

In short, there are wheels within wheels spinning here. It’s up to McCarthy and his advisers to sort through the machinery and do the political calculus. This task is beyond my poor powers.

But it does seem to me that under the prevailing practice relating to impeachment, an impeachment inquiry into whether Joe Biden used the vice presidency to enrich his son and himself is justified.