President Donald Trump's promise to shake things up in Washington has brought us back to unpleasantly familiar territory: talk of impeachment and obstruction of justice, this time involving the investigation into the Trump campaign's dealings with Russia.

But, just as it was with Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton, it is imperative to understand what the Founding Fathers intended when they created the remedy of impeachment, and how allegations of obstruction fit into the constitutional framework for holding a president accountable for misconduct in office.

The framers established impeachment as a last resort, a check to be used to deal with presidential misconduct when all other mechanisms failed. Impeachment cannot and should not be done hastily, nor should it be done for reasons so flimsy they suggest politicians are merely jockeying for political advantage rather than protecting constitutional values.

The more that impeachment proceedings appear to be rushing to judgment or driven by partisanship, the less credibility they ultimately have. The Clinton and Nixon examples offer crucial lessons about the importance of slowing down and ensuring that the public is confident that the gravity of the alleged conduct warrants the extraordinary and fundamentally undemocratic remedy of Congress removing the president from office.