Article on Impeachment from the Constitution Center site.

[Wisconsin Beth]

The presidency, impeachment and an enduring dilemma by Lyle Denniston  constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-presidency-impeachment-and-an-enduring-dilemma

After throwing off the yoke of English royal rule, and with it the idea that “the king can do no wrong,” and then growing deeply uneasy over the failed replacement with a Confederation of states governed by Congress alone, America reached for a government that would actually work yet still would answer to, and be checked by, the sovereign people.

That led to two fundamental constitutional choices at the Philadelphia convention. The first was to assign to a single person the office of President (instead of a multiple executive council), elected by the people to head one of the three branches of the new federal government. The second was to restrain that singular officer from abusing the powers conferred.

The ultimate restraint was not, as some observers still argue (and as some delegates at Philadelphia back then did argue), answering to the people at the next election. Rather, the ultimate restraint was to be impeachment—accountability, while still in office, to the peoples’ representatives.

Much debate in the summer of 1787 surrounded the question of how to craft the office of President. In the end, the choice of a single officer grew out of the felt necessity of making the President responsible. As a congressional committee staff recounted that history, in 1974 in preparation for the possible impeachment of President Richard Nixon, “the Revolution had been fought against the tyranny of a king and his council, and the framers sought to build in safeguards against executive abuse and usurpation of power. They explicitly rejected a plural executive, despite arguments that they were creating ‘the fetus of monarchy,’ because a single person would give the most responsibility to the office.” A single President would provide a single person to whom blame for abuse could be easily and directly assigned.

[Wisconsin Beth]

Mods, if this is better as part of an existing thread on Impeachment, please feel free to move it. 

[billisonboard]

...

That led to two fundamental constitutional choices at the Philadelphia convention. The first was to assign to a single person the office of President (instead of a multiple executive council), elected by the people ...

This fundemental error makes anything further suspect. Reminder of what they did actually choose as a process:

ARTICLE II

SECTION 1

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congres