This essay didn't seem to take a very strong position on the relative importance of the president's unpopularity vs. violating the law vs. abuse of power. (Is t

This essay didn't seem to take a very strong position on the relative importance of the president's unpopularity vs. violating the law vs. abuse of power. (Is the South Korean system good because it lets unpopular presidents be removed, or because it makes credible determinations, or because it shows that politicians aren't above the law...?) The article does allude to the way that a lot of calls for impeachment are strongly politically polarized from the outset. If the ultimate argument behind the impeachment process is "we don't like this president or his or her policies", a recall election or referendum process might be more honest. I imagine many high officials from many different parties in many different countries often do things that could be viewed as abusive of their power in some way. Is impeachment a useful check on that? Would there ever be a way to persuade partisans that it's not bad or embarrassing to have your party member punished for official misconduct? Maybe for a lot of people political ideology includes an idea that the other side is inherently corrupt and untrustworthy (not just honestly mistaken, holding different values, or representing different legitimate interests). In that case, trying to hold people accountable for official misconduct gets charged with an extra significance in rival political narratives: we have to impeach this person because it will help prove how corrupt their party is, or we can't let this person be impeached because it will wrongly taint our party with the stigma of corruption! I read someone's analysis that strong partisanship tends to empower politicians to act with fewer restraints and less scrutiny. Maybe that was one reason, because it's less plausible to get a broad consensus in a polarized environment that a particular action was wrong.