I believe "Maladministration" was discussed and rejected in the framing of the Constitution, because it could literally mean "We don't like his policies."
"Maladministration" seems to have been rejected not because it could mean (literally or otherwise), "We don't like his policies," but because James Madison thought it too vague. It was George Mason who took that objection and then suggested "high crimes and misdemeanors against the state" in its stead, modified to "high crimes and misdemeanors."
Says the Constitutional Rights Foundation from there:
Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since 1386, the English parliament had used “high crimes and misdemeanors†as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors†were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping “suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,†granting warrants without cause, and bribery. Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve.
(Emphasis added--EA.)
Two Congressional Research Service attorneys (Jared P. Cole, Todd Garvey),
wrote this in 2015:
Impeachable conduct does not appear to be limited to criminal behavior. Congress has identified three general types of conduct that constitute grounds for impeachment, although these categories should not be understood as exhaustive: (1) improperly exceeding or abusing the powers of the office; (2) behavior incompatible with the function and purpose of the office; and (3) misusing the office for an improper purpose or for personal gain . . .
. . . Is Impeachment Limited to Criminal Acts?
The Constitution describes the grounds of impeachment as“treason, bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.†While treason and bribery are relatively well-defined terms, the meaning of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors†is not defined in the Constitution or in statute and remains somewhat opaque. It was adopted from the English practice of parliamentary impeachments, which appears to have been directed against individuals accused of crimes against the state and encompassed offenses beyond traditional criminal law. Some have argued that only criminal acts are impeachable offenses under the United States Constitution; impeachment is therefore inappropriate for non-criminal activity. In support of this assertion, one might note that the debate on impeachable offenses during the Constitutional Convention in 1787 indicates that criminal conduct was encompassed in the “high crimes and misdemeanors†standard. The notion that only criminal conduct can constitute sufficient grounds for impeachment does not, however, comport with historical practice. Alexander Hamilton, in justifying placement of the power to try impeachments in the Senate, described impeachable offenses as arising from “the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust."
Such offenses were “political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.†According to this reasoning, impeachable conduct could include behavior that violates an official’s duty to the country, even if such conduct is not necessarily a prosecutable offense. Indeed, in the past both houses of Congress have given the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors†a broad reading, “finding that impeachable offenses need not be limited to criminal conduct.â€
(Emphases added--EA.)
Wrote Erick Trickey in
Smithsonian Magazine in October 2017:
Americans have debated the meaning of this decidedly open-ended phrase ever since. But its inclusion, as well as the guidance the Founders left regarding its interpretation, offers more protection against a dangerous executive power than many realize.
Of all the Founders who debated impeachment, three Virginians—[George] Mason,[James] Madison and delegate Edmund Randolph—did the most to set down a vision of when Congress should remove a president from office. Though the men had very different positions on the Constitution, their debates in Philadelphia and at Virginia’s ratifying convention in Richmond produced crucial definitions of an impeachable offense. And their ultimate agreement—that a president should be impeached for abuses of power that subvert the Constitution, the integrity of government, or the rule of law—remains essential to the debates we’re having today, 230 years later.
. . . “Shall any man be above justice?†Mason asked. “Shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?†A presidential candidate might bribe the electors to gain the presidency, Mason suggested. “Shall the man who has practiced corruption, and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt?â€
Madison argued that the Constitution needed a provision “for defending the community against the incapacity, negligence, or perfidy of the Chief Magistrate.†Waiting to vote him out of office in a general election wasn’t good enough. “He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculationâ€â€” embezzlement—“or oppression,†Madison warned. “He might betray his trust to foreign powers.â€
Randolph agreed on both these fronts. “The Executive will have great opportunities of abusing his power,†he warned, “particularly in time of war, when the military force, and in some respects the public money, will be in his hands.†The delegates voted, 8 states to 2, to make the executive removable by impeachment.
. . . Unfortunately for everyone who’s argued since about what an impeachable offense is, the convention’s Committee on Style and Revision, which was supposed to improve the draft Constitution’s language without changing its meaning, deleted (from the "high crimes and misdemeanors" clause) the phrase “against the United States.†Without that phrase, which explained what constitutes “high crimes,†many Americans came to believe that “high crimes†literally meant only crimes identified in criminal law.
