July 9, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:For Christ's sake, don't impeach Bush or Cheney
There's a reason the professional politicians won't touch this one, and it isn't that they're too stupid or venal to see it when opportunity knocks.
Impeaching either the president or the vice president will take up all the time of the Congress for the next six months. That means not getting things done that presumably most of my progressive friends would like to see. It also means not having any achievements to show the electorate next year except . . . impeaching Bush.
And impeaching Bush is a political loser.
I know, I know. He's EVIL. And the electorate hates him! Of course it's time to strike.
No. The electorate hates him for getting us into the Iraq mess. That's not illegal. The stuff that's arguably impeachably illegal, like Guantanamo, is the stuff the public likes.
You could try the "Bush lied, people died" line of attack, but the evidence for that is fairly shaky; it's just as plausible to believe that the administration lied to themselves, the way every single administration does when there is a policy that they want to pursue, but not terribly good evidence to support it. Plus, this argument has already been aired extensively. Unless you think that Congress can find a smoking gun, you will simply eat up a huge amount of air time with arcane arguments.
Meanwhile, you will divide the country. Remember 1998? 2000? The various merits of impeachment will be all anyone can talk about. And all that talk will have the effect of moving anyone who voted for Bush back towards the Republican party. Every vehement attack on Bush is an opportunity for a disgusted moderate Republican to experience a vehement attack on his or her judgement in voting for the bastard. Right now, the country is united in hating Bush. Impeach him, and most of the haters will peel off.
Nixon fell because his behaviour was inarguably criminal, and worse, petty criminal. And he had it all on tape.
Bush's behaviour is not inarguably criminal. Impeaching him will generate a gigantic mess. And the negative feelings about that gigantic mess will almost certainly be laid at the Democratic Party's door. An impeachment is almost the only thing guaranteed to deliver a Republic president and the loss of at least one house of Congress in 2008.
Posted by Jane Galt at July 9, 2007 10:33 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>Jane, I find your arguments compelling. Bring on the impeachment hearings!
Posted by: Michael on July 9, 2007 11:03 AMHow do you reconcile the idea that people will blame the opposition party for impeachment proceedings with the fact that the Republicans tried to knock off Clinton and then won the Presidency in the next election?
Posted by: Alsadius on July 9, 2007 11:04 AMIf the Lewinsky/Paula Jones depositions had taken place in the 2nd half of 1998 or later, Clinton would never have been impeached. I even suspect that if the Watergate revelations had come to light after the '74 elections, Nixon would have finished his 2nd term. Timing is important in these matters. If the Democrats were to go forward with impeachment right now, the Democratic candidates would be forced to become full throated supporters, in order to gain Democratic primary voters' support. A non-D.C.-based Republican would then have a perfect opportunity to market himself as the fresh alternative to the morass of Washington.
Posted by: Will Allen on July 9, 2007 11:25 AMThe country is united in hating Bush? I thought (and admittedly I read blogs to get my news, so there...) that the country was united in hating Congress, with Senate lumped in? You know, pork, immigration bill, corruption scandals...
I guess trying to impeach Bush will only add to that (perhaps praiseworthy) feeling. Which means it will unite, not divide the country? :-D
The big question of course is who to vote for in 2008. Well, Mickey Mouse is running every year, or so I've heard.
Posted by: ...Max... on July 9, 2007 11:28 AMBush is a bastard? You mess up the execution of one little war and out come the epithets.
Perhaps the more accurate term is incompetent? A bad manager? Loyal to a fault (toward Rumsfeld/Cheney)? A certain amount of deliberate ADD?
And one does not necessarily become a bastard by virtue of the failing of a policy that most people supported at the time it was implemented.
After all, we, the viewers, can support and unsupport any given policy without missing an episode of our favorite show, without facing any emotional or historical blowback. Our home prices rose, our employment was good, whatever.
Until Bush turns out to have no father or be of virgin birth (like Jesus), I will wait a bit for his total bastardization coronation, and postpone nailing him to our crosshairs.
I think a lot of the problem is that the Administration was incompetent and arrogant in its execution of the war, and the average person was incompetent and arrogant in their understanding of the complexities of other cultures.
We Americans have the tendency to assume that we are right and that everything will go our way, until.. it doesn't. Then steam pops from our collective head and we malfunction.
Posted by: Finn on July 9, 2007 11:34 AMI thought Clinton should have been impeached and then removed from office. He did break the law. The best part of the impeachment hearings, in my opinion, was when the Republicans wheeled out those people who went to jail for committing perjury about a sexual matter.
Of course, the Democrats could have seized the moral high ground and dumped Clinton. Gore would have become president, and he would have probably defeated Bush in 2000.
Do progressives want to impeach Bush and Cheney, remove them from office at the same time, and make Nancy Pelosi president?
Think this over. To prevent that, Bush or Cheney could resign, and a new VP would be picked for Bush or Cheney as the new president. Yes, the Democrats have to confirm the new VP, but they would have to offer valid reasons why he or should not be confirmed. For how long could turning down VP candidates take place without pissing off the electorate?
Let's say the Democrats succeed and knock both Bush and Cheney out. Pelosi is president. Does she run for re-election as the incumbent? Can anyone imagine Hillary or Obama dropping out? Reagan came close to defeating Ford in 1976 for the GOP nomination. The primary no doubt helped Carter win by a razor-thin margin.
As to the merits of the case, I don't think Bush lied. He just believed what he wanted to believe about WMDs in Iraq. History will judge him harshly for leading us into an unnecessary war. Also, Bush never lied under oath, which is what many progressives never mention about Clinton.
Big Mac might appreciate this. Some commentators have suggested that if the economy was strong in 1974, Nixon might have fended off impeachment. Likewise, if the economy were bad in 1998-1999, Clinton might have gone down.
The economy seems to be strong. If we were in a recession, then maybe Bush/Cheney would have to worry about being removed.
Posted by: D------- on July 9, 2007 11:39 AMThere is no excuse for failing to impeach Bush.
It's not a political matter - it's constitutional.
Posted by: Callimaco on July 9, 2007 11:41 AMlast couple of people who I have talked to concerning the impeachment rhetoric, clearly didn't understand what it was about, and with a congress whose rating is actually lower than the President's? sheyeah, like people are going to believe them?
As has been for years, the Dems REALLY need to find something to be ABOUT and not something to be an alternative from. And then they should just leave the GOP alone, and it appears it will self destruct for this election...
But? Like the GOP themselves, the Dems are also trying to self destruct...
Where's Jon Anderson when you need him? OI! And where is a Congress that listens to itself and it's people?
Posted by: D on July 9, 2007 11:46 AMGoodness, anyone who thinks there is a dichotomy between the political and the constitutional, understands neither phenomena.
Posted by: Will Allen on July 9, 2007 11:51 AMGoodness, anyone who thinks there is *not* a dichotomy between the political and the constitutional, understands neither phenomena.
Posted by: Callimaco on July 9, 2007 11:53 AMFair enough, Callimaco, persist in the belief that politics can be kept seperate from a political document.
Posted by: Will Allen on July 9, 2007 11:57 AMIf everything is political then nothing is political. You have to be able to make *distinctions* between things (which is not the same as saying there is a "dichotomy" - as you put it; language I would ultimately reject myself).
Sometimes it is necessary to make a distinction between the political and the constitutional. And I, for one, have no trouble seeing that distinction.
And such a distinction is necessary here. It's not about who wins; it's about the powers of whoever wins.
Posted by: Callimaco on July 9, 2007 12:08 PMCallimaco, you apparently believe the word "constituional" is synonymous with the word "everything". It isn't. No, everything is not political. However, what is constitutional is inherently political, and no, politics cannot be kept seperate from The Constitution, a document which, at it's core, is about the interplay of competing political institutions. Who wins can never be, and will never be, ignored.
Posted by: Will Allen on July 9, 2007 12:35 PMNever said it could Callimaco. On the other hand, you did posit that something could a constitutional matter, and not a political matter. That is impossible.
Posted by: Will Allen on July 9, 2007 1:15 PMMeanwhile, you will divide the country. Remember 1998? 2000? The various merits of impeachment will be all anyone can talk about. And all that talk will have the effect of moving anyone who voted for Bush back towards the Republican party. Every vehement attack on Bush is an opportunity for a disgusted moderate Republican to experience a vehement attack on his or her judgement in voting for the bastard. Right now, the country is united in hating Bush. Impeach him, and most of the haters will peel off.
I doubt that “most of the country hates [President] Bush.” A lot of us who voted for him were dissatisfied with what he did on the domestic front (Medicare Part D, spending in general and the recent immigration bill) but realize that the Democrats were worse and others were just upset over the Iraqi campaign of the War (although that doesn’t meant they support Democrat efforts to cut off funding for our troops or announce to the enemy how long they need to hold on until we cut and run).
I’m almost at the point where I won’t be voting in 2008 unless we have candidate like Mitt R0mney or John McCain (who seems to be faltering after the showdown over the immigration bill) with strong fiscal conservative credentials. If it’s a big spender like Giuliani, Brownback, or Huckabee, I don’t see any real reason to turn out next fall unless it’s to vote against the Democrat candidate all of whom are just awful.
I'll never vote for a guy who has as much contempt for the Constitution, or, alternatively is too illiterate to grasp the meaning of the phrase "Congress shall make no law....", as McCain. I doubt I will cast a ballot for President in 16 months.
Posted by: Will Allen on July 9, 2007 1:36 PMMegan, you are assuming that most Americans even know what impeachement is, and they don't. Just last fall I had the misfortune of being in my biology class late enough to hear my lab instructor and another discuss how absurd it was that Bush was not being impeached. I had to stop my work to explain to them what impeachment was and why Bush won't be impeached and why Clinton was. They had no idea what I was talking about. To them the only thing that mattered was that when "Clinton lied nobody died." And these guys are scientists with PhDs. I shudder to think what regular Democratic morons believe.
Posted by: Christina on July 9, 2007 1:45 PMI agree with everything you say except your conclusions.
IMNSHO, gridlock in Congress is a GOOD thing.
Posted by: bud on July 9, 2007 2:03 PMPolitically, let's face it, the GOP did themselves a favor with the failed impeachment. While they suffered minor congressional losses, the won the next presidency and soon made up for their congressional losses. Long ago, Henry Maine, one of the little read Victorian conservatives that Russell Kirk recommends, made the point that politics is and always will be about entertainment , especially in a democracy. Maine - who thought that basically, there was very little reason to legislate anything, and that the legislature should, very often, review and delete the laws it had already made - considered entertainment the driving force in democratic politics. I think he is right. Impeaching Bush might not be possible, but impeaching Cheney would be entertaining to the max, and pretty easy to do. Democratic "morons" would, I think, have years of talking points they could use, which will be a good thing when the Democratic majority in the Senate is reinforced next year.
Posted by: roger on July 9, 2007 2:10 PMFinn said: We Americans have the tendency to assume that we are right and that everything will go our way, until.. it doesn't. Then steam pops from our collective head and we malfunction.
If you'd said that before, oh, mid-2003, you would've been called an America hater. ~28% or so of the public probably still thinks that.
Posted by: Derek Scruggs on July 9, 2007 2:57 PMI think the Dems would be crazy to try to impeach Bush but what's to say they aren't. They're better off to talk about it and investigate and have the media haul the water for them right up to next years election.
Posted by: Bandit on July 9, 2007 3:08 PMI don't know whether it's "inarguably" illegal, but I think the best argument for impeachment of Gonzales/Cheney/Bush is eavesdropping in violation of FISA. Most legal authorities, including on the right, e.g. Orin Kerr, agree that it was illegal. The whole trying to twist Ashcroft's arm while he's in hospital story mitigates the angle that it's arcane and/or popular.
Posted by: Crust on July 9, 2007 6:01 PMPS the argument from eavesdropping is strongest for impeaching Gonzales. Bush could argue he relied on legal counsel, etc. That's a little harder for Gonzales for the obvious reasons.
Posted by: Crust on July 9, 2007 6:06 PMNo, Bush is not evil.
Dick Cheney, perhaps, is evil. Or maybe he's flagrantly barking nuts. He seems like the kind of guy who might dress up like Napoleon and get the Risk board out when noone else is around.
Or maybe he's just a garden variety black-hearted SOB.
I'd say there is zero downside, politically or any other way, to impeaching Cheney. Declaring yourself a one-man special branch of government should do for grounds, for starters at least.
Who's going to complain? What are his positive numbers? Low teens?
Everyone hates Cheney.
Impeach Cheney and you take all the steam out of Bush. If it takes Congress six months to accomplish that, I'd say it was time well spent.
Thanks -
Posted by: russell on July 9, 2007 8:22 PM"Impeaching either the president or the vice president will take up all the time of the Congress for the next six months"
I'm sold -- when do we begin?
No man's life, liberty or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
If you'd said that before, oh, mid-2003, you would've been called an America hater. ~28% or so of the public probably still thinks that.
Nah. Some of us in the other Fictitious Percent Range simply think there's an element of fundamental ignorance about Amerca's own cultural uniqueness bound up in statements of that sort, no matter how many international leftists will applaud it and offer you the same and only thing they ever have to offer: homilies and low-calorie talking points.
Posted by: anony-mouse on July 10, 2007 12:57 AMJane, please describe the dire consequences that befell the GOP after their impeachment of Clinton.
Oh, wait, there are none. They won the Presidency. Why would it be the reverse for the Dems now, when impeachment of Bush and Cheney is FAR more popular than impeachment of Clinton EVER was?
Seems to me you're just making stuff up because you just don't want your pet crooks impeached. There is ample justification.
PS: to the extent Congress is unpopular, it's largely because they've not been hard *enough* on Bush and Bush's policies.
Posted by: Jon H on July 10, 2007 6:21 PM"Bush's behaviour is not inarguably criminal." It will apparently be a surprise you that lying to Congress is a crime. Lying to the nation about going to war should certainly be a higher crime. As for dividing the nation, who still supports this man and his administration beyond a rapidly diminishing group of fanatics? Please get a grip on reality. Congress dawdles at our peril.
Posted by: Michael C on July 10, 2007 7:46 PMIt's quite likely that Bush and Cheney lied to Fitzgerald about the Plame leak.
Posted by: Jon H on July 10, 2007 10:46 PMToo bad, Megan: sucks to be a Democrat now.
Six months ago? Those were the salad days. But now, the Democrats will pay the price for catering the the politics of extremism. There's a price for Markos and the Kidz after all, and you're about to pay it.
It's as if Karl Rove is actually calling this one in. If you wanted to rehabilitate Bush, what would you do? Get the Moonbats to buffalo otherwise sensible Democratic politicians into listening to the base voters that Bush and Cheney needed to be impeached? Why? Because They Lied and Kids Died! And because The World Can't Wait! And whatever else KagroX and the rest of the gang can come up with.
Six months ago, the message from the electorate was disgust with Bush and the Republicans in Congress. So they gave the Democrats, in Clinton's words, "a chance". But just as we did in 1998 lining up behind Noot, this will come a cropper.
I remember sitting down with a fellow political operative in Sarasota. I told him that the Democrats wouldn't be able to help themselves. They hated Bush so much that even their Old Bulls would find reasons to try and go after him. He agreed, and said that neither party was speaking to "Fred and Martha's" concerns. Both of us told each other that the guy who would come out on top at the end would probably be Rudy-the guy who could get things done, Kill the Islamist terrorists and stack 'em like cordwood, and fix the potholes.
In six months the Democrats have succeeded in alienating the electorate who sent them to Congress, falling in love with earmarks and bridges to nowhere. They run for the trough in ways that make Tom DeLay look lika chaste novitiate. Rahm Emanuel and Schumer thought that the voters wouldn't notice.
That just goes to show you that Washington Democrats and Washington Republicans share one common trait: both members of Washington's political classes know how to be too clever by half.
So, if you're a Democratic leader who can't get things done, what do you do? Kick Bush's ass, of course. When you're approval ratings are down in Suckville you do stupid things like keep sending Waxman out to go after Condi Rice, which is one of those dumb as dirt things that the Left came up with to criminalize those they disagree with. It's as if the Netroots decided to take a blowtorch to the entire sitting government on the mere suspicion that there might be the appearance of wrongdoing that they once heard about on Usenet. Leahy and the attorneys is another laugh riot. In the end, the Democrats are trying to argue the President out of a constitutional prerogative.
It's an excuse to distract attention from not being able to get things done. "Oversight" becomes a political club, and an end in an of itself instead of a tool to make government more efficient and responsive to the people. And, in the end, the political impulses and rage within activist Democrats only enhances the movement to impeach.
The clamor on the Left for "Impeachment" is getting louder and louder. It is beginning to be taken seriously by people who, were they actually politicians worthy of the heritage of Roosevelt, Truman, Sam Rayburn, and Jack Kennedy, would tell these prats to sit down and shut up.
But they can't, because the prats at Kos have money. And they are backed up by a Soros Left that wants Bush impeached, too.
Don't get me wrong. This is great for Republicans. Rudy or Fred Thompson will waltz into the Oval Office on this noise. They would probably beat Hillary anyway, given the fact that Bushhitler is not on the ballot in 2008, something that most Democrats forget. But in their anger, they can't just leave the Dumb Guy from Texas alone. There's that 2000 Election they want revanche for, like the French in the decades after the Franco-Prussian war of 1871. All the other reasons Democrats give are just superstructure (hat tip: all Marxian historiographers) given to rationalize their rage. I know this. I've been there. It's the same as we had in the late nineties because we couldn't handle the fact that Clinton had our number and kicked our asses. Twice.
But it's bad for the country, just as all that noise was in 1998. Impeachment has become this slowly accelerating freight train that Democrats want to stop, but can't really, because they've convinced themselves that Bush and Cheney are evil men. And as Megan said, it is bad for the Democrats.
But they just can't help themselves. Revanche!
This is what happens when people believe what they read on blogs.
Posted by: section9 on July 10, 2007 11:34 PMIt has been long established that Bush did not win the 2000 election. He was appointed by the Supreme Court. And seizing the high moral ground would have been to not be pushed around by the GOP zealots who, now that a worse situation has occurred with Libby, have shown how they were lying all along then about how much it mattered to them.
>>>Of course, the Democrats could have seized the moral high ground and dumped Clinton. Gore would have become president, and he would have probably defeated Bush in 2000.
Posted by: steve talbert on July 10, 2007 11:55 PM
While no one likes admitting they made a mistake, frequently adults get around to it anyway. Check out the polls, they can't be that misinformed.
Sounds like you think petty crimes are more impeachable than wholesale offenses against the Constitution. You must miss the Clinton years and the obsession with the irrelevant.
Gore lost because the media decided to paint him as inauthentic and "the same as Bush almost". Every untruth or insinuation about Gore was worth repeating ad nauseum, creating better advertising for Bush than money could buy. And he still won the popular vote and likely the electoral vote. (If Clinton had run, he would have won by 15-20 points).
Anyway, there's wholescale corruption and politicization in this government going far past what other administrations have done, and far past being Constitional. The Libby/Cheney leak, hiring career positions with a political litmus test, official lies to Congress, maintaining an off-the-books set of records (e.g. e-mail systems), etc. The public is growing in awareness of this, I'm not sure why you aren't.
Congress is unpopular because Republican and Lieberman resistance creates gridlock, not because Conyers and Leahy aren't doing a bang-up good job. Separate the Democrats in Congress from the Republicans and the ratings don't look that bad. Get us out of Iraq and impeach Bush & Cheney, and they'll be back up to 50% approval. [Hmmm... has Congress ever reachd 50% approval?]
Posted by: Desider on July 11, 2007 1:05 AMAs I see it, the choice facing Congress and this nation could not be more stark:
Option 1: Impeach Bush and Cheney.
Option 2: Concede that the Bush/Cheney theory of governance is now the model we use in America, that we have no system of checks and balances and indeed no checks at all on presidential authority, and that essentially, we go to the polls every four years to elect a dictator limited to four year terms.
If we go the latter route, I assume none of you will object when President Hillary Clinton responds to an abortion clinic bombing by rounding up hundreds of American citizens who belong to Operation Rescue and flying them to Gitmo for a good ass-fucking until they confess their involvement with domestic terrorism.
Posted by: Alan on July 11, 2007 1:18 PMI'm just waiting for the first thing President Hillary does is arrest George Bush as an enemy combatant, hold him at some secret location and not tell anyone she has done it.
Posted by: spencer on July 11, 2007 2:54 PMHmmm... has Congress ever reachd 50% approval?
They've never had 16% approvals before, that's for sure. Go DemCong 2007! How low can you go?
Posted by: Good Lt on July 12, 2007 11:02 PM". I had to stop my work to explain to them what impeachment was and why Bush won't be impeached and why Clinton was. They had no idea what I was talking about. To them the only thing that mattered was that when "Clinton lied nobody died." And these guys are scientists with PhDs. I shudder to think what regular Democratic morons believe"
Christina,
You should probably not throw the word moron around so easily, as you too do not understand impeachment. It does not require what we normally think of as a crime. Do some searching into the term, "High crimes and misdemeanors" and the discussions in the federalist papers and you will see that abuse of public trust is widely considered grounds for impeachment - "Bush lied people died" is, in fact, grounds for impeachment , despite the fact that it is not a violation of law. I would not recommend that the Congress attempt to pursue it, though. It would be seen as a technical justification for a politically motivated impeachment.