Powerful engines of political mayhem are cranking up in the U.S.

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U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has authorized an impeachment inquiry directed at President Joe Biden. One of the most powerful engines of American political investigation is cranking up just as four other significant factors are in motion: legal questions surrounding Hunter Biden, the President’s son; Mr. McCarthy’s effort to stave off a rebellion on his right; the real threat of a government shutdown; and heightened campaigning for the 2024 presidential elections. Questions abound, answers are elusive. But here is a viewers’ guide to the political mayhem south of the border.

What has Mr. McCarthy set in motion?

He has initiated an inquiry into whether the House should proceed with an actual drive to impeach the President. The difference between an “impeachment inquiry” and “impeachment proceedings” is subtle but significant. This new development is an effort to determine whether formal impeachment proceedings should be undertaken. Republicans on the right believe it is a precursor to more formal action, but even some Republicans believe it is an investigation in dogged search of a crime. Democrats regard it as a desperate effort to match Donald Trump’s substantial legal liability with artificial political liability for Mr. Biden.

Is there real basis for this?

There is little question that many elements of the activities of the President’s son deserve legal scrutiny. Again, it is the subtleties that matter. The younger Mr. Biden, already facing tax and gun-possession charges, is in danger of being accused of influence peddling – the quiet if not overt use of his father’s political position and influence for financial advantage. The father’s presence on the son’s business telephone calls is problematic at best, a substantial element of jeopardy at worst. For years, the President’s opponents have wondered at the comfortable if not lavish lifestyle and real estate holdings of a man whose résumé includes nearly a half-century of government service – two years as a commissioner in Castle County, Del., 36 in the Senate, eight in the vice-presidency, and three in the White House.

Why did Mr. McCarthy move so decisively and so swiftly?

He is arguing that the cumulative questions about Mr. Biden’s finances, his son’s business activities and the answers that the President has given to inquiries about Hunter Biden’s private work bear investigation. Many Democrats are uneasy about those questions as well. But the timing suggests that the Speaker responded at least as much to questions about his own political survival. Facing a rebellion on the right from the very sources that made his election to the leadership of the House of Representatives an embarrassing spectacle, he announced an impeachment probe that those rebels have sought for months. Thus the inquiry is the blending of two hopes: that it might produce the proverbial “smoking gun” that could lead to an actual House impeachment; and that the Speaker’s gesture might placate the rebels.

What are the rebels’ complaints with Mr. McCarthy?

Like everything else on Capitol Hill, the answer is both simple and complicated. The simple: This group, known as the Freedom Caucus, wants to cut government spending, address immigration issues on the border with Mexico, and end what it calls “the left’s cancerous woke policies in the Pentagon undermining our military’s core war-fighting mission.” The complicated: The 45 members of this group – especially a core of about two dozen of them – are opposing a stopgap funding measure known as a “continuing resolution” that would prevent a government shutdown later this month. In most cases, continuing resolutions maintain current funding levels – but not always. These resolutions could include spending changes or alterations in the rate in which appropriated dollars are expended. All of that is fodder for negotiations later this month.

Why does the Freedom Caucus have such influence over the Speaker?

In the past, House speakers have ruled with power similar to European despots; speaker Thomas Brackett Reed, who ruled the chamber for four years beginning in 1894, actually was known as Czar Reed. In more recent years, Democratic speaker Thomas (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (ruling the House from 1977-1987) and Republican speaker Newt Gingrich (1995-1999) had iron control over the House; nothing moved without their support. But Mr. McCarthy barely won the Speaker’s gavel and is vulnerable in a way none of his predecessors were to a process called “vacating the chair,” which essentially allows a single lawmaker to call for a vote to declare the Speaker’s chair “vacant.” This little-understood element of House rules has never been employed. But it is a real threat that Mr. McCarthy’s skeptics hold over him every day.

Is this impeachment inquiry nothing more than political equity?

One of the impetuses for this inquiry is the double-impeachment of Mr. Trump and the old chestnut, perhaps dating to the middle of the 18th century, about turnabout being fair play. The former president has been urging his House allies to impeach Mr. Biden as retribution for his own impeachments. Just this week, one of his principal allies, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, had dinner with Mr. Trump and said she told the former president that she hoped the impeachment inquiry would be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

Is Mr. Biden likely to be removed from office?

No, at least from what is known at this juncture. It is not even clear that there is sufficient support among Republicans, who hold a slim margin of power, to proceed further. And the Senate, where a two-thirds majority is required to remove a president, has a Democratic majority. Mr. Biden has relative job security, at least until next November’s election.

Will this become part of the presidential campaign?

Almost certainly. The Republican candidates for president now routinely are asked whether they would, if elected, pardon Mr. Trump and some of the insurrectionists in the Jan. 6, 2021, siege of the Capitol. That question likely will be paired in the GOP debate later this month with whether they support impeaching Mr. Biden. In Iowa, site of the first caucus of the 2024 political season, Representative Randy Feenstra already has said that it was “evident that a further and more thorough investigation is warranted to protect the integrity of our institutions, defend the rule of law in our country, and hold President Biden accountable for his corruption.”

Is there triple danger here?

Surely there is. The first danger is to Mr. Biden, in the event that more damaging information emerges about his own financial holdings and his involvement in his son’s business activities. The second is to the Republicans who are undertaking this effort; the backlash to the 1998 impeachment of Bill Clinton resulted in the Democrats picking up five House seats in a midterm congressional election in which the party holding the White House generally suffers losses on Capitol Hill.

But the greater danger is in the normalization of impeachment, which has occurred only four times in American history – but three times in the past quarter century. The gap between the first impeachment (of Andrew Johnson, in 1868) and the next one (Mr. Clinton) was 130 years. The repeated employment of impeachment proceedings takes the sting out of what was intended to be the ultimate sanction in American politics.