July 9, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Is Bush blocking needed change?
Well, obviously, when you are a member of the other party, the president is always blocking needed change. Given that, Ezra says that impeaching him couldn't make any difference (Ezra is against impeaching him for other reasons):
Exactly how does Megan think Congress is working now? The Democrats were elected on one of the clearest agendas in modern times: Drawing down the Iraq War, passing anti-corruption legislation, and instituting a series of popular, if small, pieces of economic populism (increase in the minimum wage, Medicare bargaining, etc). Bush has stymied every one. And because Democrats don't have 60+ votes in the Senate, literally nothing has gone through. He has, in every way, used his control of the executive branch to thwart the clear will of the electorate. To say that he shouldn't be impeached because, well, that would keep Congress from actually getting things done is truly off-base.
That's not strictly true; there's a minimum wage bill, for example. But I take the point: Democrats aren't making the sweeping changes they desire.
But that doesn't mean no policy work is getting done. All the bills that are being put forward are advancing the Democrats' policy agenda by hammering out the details of policy proposals that could eventually be passed with a friendlier congress and/or president. They're also giving the Democrats things that they can point to when they run in 2008--concrete proposals that they can accuse the Bush administration, or their Republican opponents, of blocking. All that stops if you impeach the president. And the political disarray which is almost sure to follow will continue to have effects even after the trial.
Plus, even if you succeeded in removing Bush, you haven't removed the problem, which is the Republicans in Congress. Who will definitely be in no mood to cooperate even a little bit should you press impeachment.
Posted by Jane Galt at July 9, 2007 11:45 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links"); ?>"Passing anti-corruption legislation" - please. SOP for the opposition party in year 7, by which time the current administration has invariably gotten a little too comfortable.
BTW, the anti-pork movement lasted exactly how long after the new Congress began its term?
Posted by: Eriver on July 9, 2007 12:09 PMConsidering that recent surveys have regularly found the Congressional approval rating to be even lower than the president's already-low rating, Ezra may want to avoid playing the finger-pointing game here.
First, as Eriver noted above, sources of this disapproval are exemplified by the Democratic session's unwillingness to be serious about the corrupting influence of earmarks once the heat of the election was off. Then there was all that immigration bill blather the last couple weeks about the problematic loud people (Graham), the trials of unfettered talk radio (Lott), and "the will of the Senate shall prevail" (Specter). Who's ignoring which mandate, again?
Either that, or these congress critters think they're writing the script for the inevitable Episode VII -- which, come to think of it, might be a better use of their time and talents.
Second, the president also has an electoral mandate, it just operates on a longer term of office than that of Congress. If I remember my high school civics correctly, the executive and legislative branches are part of a system of "checks and balances". If Ezra's complaint can be reduced to an observation the executive and legislative branches are at an impasse, then cue the Hallelujah chorus now.
Posted by: anony-mouse on July 9, 2007 12:43 PMExactly how does Megan think Congress is working now? The Democrats were elected on one of the clearest agendas in modern times: Drawing down the Iraq War, passing anti-corruption legislation, and instituting a series of popular, if small, pieces of economic populism (increase in the minimum wage, Medicare bargaining, etc). Bush has stymied every one.
I seem to recall in 2006 being told that “divided government” was the goal and that so long as we had a Republican president and a Democrat controlled Congress, the result would be gridlock. Given how many people pushed that line during the last election, Ezra Klein’s party of preference may not really have been “elected on one of the clearest agendas in modern times.”
Also there’s the fact that Democrats began breaking their own campaign promises such as the Minority Bill of Rights, reforming the way the House operates, and halving the interest rate on student loans almost immediately upon gaining control of Congress. It’s hard to complain with a straight face that your agenda has been “stymied” when you abandoned large parts of it before you even started.
Posted by: Thorley Winston on July 9, 2007 1:06 PMThe controlling party in Congress can easily deal with key legislation if they will simplify bills into a single clear purpose. They choose not to.
Simple, clear bills force each member to take a stand - yea or nay. That is what they avoid.
So we get bills of hundreds or thousands of pages filled with obscure details and rules. Sometimes the bill addresses several topics. No one understands all the details which consist mostly of favors, No one understands the consequences of all the rules and their interactions.
Then we have the farce that appropriation is separated from the enabling bill. So we have laws that are not enforced for lack of funds. But, by golly, they sure sound good.
Simple bills make the President accept or veto on his principles. He cannot say he accepts and then issue a complex signing statement to the contrary. And he cannot veto and then cite the bill as good but flawed in details.
Posted by: K on July 9, 2007 1:06 PMImpeaching Bush makes Cheney president. How exactly does that help the Democrats?
Posted by: Richard on July 9, 2007 1:09 PMImpeaching Bush makes Cheney president. How exactly does that help the Democrats?
Posted by: Richard on July 9, 2007 1:10 PMThe Democrats in congress are shamefully playing a waiting game through the 2008 elections. They look at the political picture and realize that all they have to do in the next year and a half is not screw up and significant gains in Congress as well as a likely presidency will be their reward.
Unfortunately, by sitting on their hands hoping Repubs continue to implode, the Dems might be making the very mistake they are trying to avoid.
Posted by: wallster on July 9, 2007 1:14 PMPlus having impeachment hearings makes the Democrats look petty after Clinton. Tit for tat.
On the other hand, they look very magnanimous if instead of actually impeaching Bush, they float around a few polls, spread some rumors and then declare as often as possible that impeachment is off the table.
That way they go down in history in the eyes of the voters as possibly having some claim to being able to impeach Bush, but they were big enough to just forget about it.
Posted by: cdub on July 9, 2007 1:20 PMThe Democrats were elected on one of the clearest agendas in modern times
As long as the Democrats first go back and enact all of Bush's 2004 agenda (we can start with Social Security privitization), I'm fine with them getting their 2006 agenda.
Oh, wait, you mean Bush should give in to the Democrats 2006 agenda even though they didn't give in to Bush's 2004 agenda? Sorry, I failed to understand the hypocrisy.
Posted by: Al on July 9, 2007 1:45 PMPlus having impeachment hearings makes the Democrats look petty after Clinton. Tit for tat.
I'm fairly certain that wouldn't stop them, if they thought they could pull it off.
Posted by: anony-mouse on July 9, 2007 1:52 PMAnd I'm fairly certain pigs could fly if they had wings. They don't and the democrats stand little chance of impeaching Bush, but they give themselves brownie points for hyping up impeachment talk while insisting there is no way they're gonna impeach.
Posted by: cdub on July 9, 2007 1:59 PMBush stymied anti-corruption legislation?
If he could point me to the veto, I'd like to see it, because I sure as hell don't remember it.
And, uh, didn't they pass the minimum wage increase? And didn't the President sign in, in May?
Some incompetent stymier, him.
Posted by: Sigivald on July 9, 2007 2:13 PMThe dems are better off with Bush in office. He is so easy to run against. People want to vote against reps, if there ever was an election to run the least contriversial white guy, this is it. The dems are best off with as many of the administration faces in place as possible. With Cheney, it's remember the shot gun, Libby, the VP not part of Exec branch, etc...With Gonzalez, it's the politization of the just dept. To bad Rumsfeld ain't there, because Rice sure has been kept distant from Iraq.
Posted by: better in office on July 9, 2007 2:14 PMAnd I'm fairly certain pigs could fly if they had wings.
Unlikely. No hollow bones, large body mass, etc. It would be roughly like having an ultra-dense penguin at three times the scale, and that with poorer aerodynamics.
Posted by: anony-mouse on July 9, 2007 2:41 PMWhat exactly has Bushed blocked? Last I counted, he had vetoed two--TWO-- whole bills and both of them concerned funding embryonic stem cell research.
So, what are the "impeachable offenses"? He lied about the war? So, you can prove that he KNEW that there were no WMDs? You'd be the first. The entire international community thought that there were WMDs. He was hardly a maverick holding that point of view.
Torture? That's not as easy as it sounds, either. First, you have to define it. Is being wrapped in an Israeli flag torture? Good luck convincing America that it is. Having a woman rub her breasts on you? Eh....I guess I'd have to see the woman to determine that.
No, no, no. REAL torture, you say. You mean fake electrodes to the nads? having girls laugh at your incredibly small genitals? What about "water-boarding", the process of simulating drowning.
You say, RF you're a smart ass. Yes, I am and you must be new to this blog. Here's the point: In order to impeach, you have to get very specific in your claims. You have to show that whichever act you are refering to meets the definition of torture, is not easily mockable, and that the V & POTUS knowily allowed (or, ordered) those acts to happen. "But people died!" OK. You aren't supposed to die when you are water boarded. Obviously, it was not done correctly.
Wire-tapping & al. Matter for the courts. So far, the Bush admin has won some and lost some, but none of their actions rise to the level of impeachment.
In fact, you may not agree with them but none of the actions usually mentioned are impeachable. I don't agree with a lot that the Bushies have done and I certainly do not agree with their opinions about taking away our civil liberties.
And here is the biggest reason why it won't happen:
But, but....Clinton....
I don't like to use that defense but if I'm GWB's lawyer, I am going into the Senate and show every time that Clinton did the same things that Bush is being charged with. Gitmo? Clinton held people there first. Wiretapping? Guess who was there first? Fire a couple of DAs? Clinton and Reagan fired all of theirs! Civil liberites? I'd be shouting out "Ruby Ridge!" every time anyone said the words. What did George Tenet, a CLINTON appointee say about WMDs? "Slamdunk" I think was the term. The House and Senate saw the exact same intel that Bush did and voted for the war. Let's run that roll call and see how each of them voted.
If Congress held impeachment hearings, Hillary would have to drop out of the election.
Posted by: Reagan Fan on July 9, 2007 3:18 PMBush stymied anti-corruption legislation? If he could point me to the veto, I'd like to see it, because I sure as hell don't remember it.
That and the minimum wage both took me by surprise. At first I thought Ezra Klein was just being sloppy in his writing but he emphasized the words “every one” and now I really he’s just being dishonest.
All of the impeachment talk is just hot air. If I were a Republican, I would ignore it. Surely the Dems remember Cheney shouting, "Go f__ yourself!" at Pat Leahy on the floor of the Senate. They can't think that he will be kinder and gentler, especially after they impeach Bush. Even if they had Bush red-handed, they don't want Cheney inheriting the throne.
And they don't have time to impeach them both. All of the aspirants who are current Senators would end up choosing between participating in the impeachment hearings and attending their campaigns. There aren't enough news cycles left before the general elections. Impeaching even one would leave them talking about the impeachment for too many of those news cycles, while the Repub '08 candidates get free passes to talk about whatever else they want.
How much longer will we put up with all of this?
How long until we decide to build a government free of the politics of personal power?
Impeaching him (and Cheney) for violating his constitutional oath seems like a much better plan than "because he disagrees with your pet policies." Just an idea.
Posted by: Noah Yetter on July 9, 2007 4:39 PMWhy would the Democrats want to impeach Bush and Cheney before the elections?
Impeaching Bush and Cheney gives the Republicans a President who HAS to have higher popularity polls than Bush and Cheney, and a Republican President who can then run as the incumbent in 2008 while blaming Bush and Cheney for everything that has gone wrong.
The Democrats will just keep refusing to impeach Bush and Cheney until the Republicans are desperate enough to accept Pelosi as President instead of insisting on a Republican, like when Nixon was forced out.
If the world of politics was logical, it would be the Republicans who would want to impeach Bush. Heck, a rational Republican would want to impeach Bush and put Pelosi in charge.
Her ratings rival Bush's and she is a Democrat. Also,they would not be giving up that many months of Republican administration so it would be a small price to pay for help in the next election.
Posted by: Ape Man on July 9, 2007 6:22 PMNoah, you're such a kidder.
The Constitutional oath has no "do" attached to it.
Clinton, after the Senate had rejected a candidate under the "advise and consent" function that is written into the Constitution, turned around and appointed the same person to the same post as an "interim" appointment.
That's the only 100% clear violation of the Constitution in the last three presidencies. Everything else is just argument over powers, with President and Congress claiming powers and Court playing umpire, two-to-one wins.
Besides, can't win an impeachment without a 2/3 majority.
Posted by: Twill00 on July 9, 2007 10:24 PMI am not interested in how impeaching President Bush might help or hurt the Democrats in Congress. It was my understanding that impeachment kind of required the President to break a law (like Clinton lying under oath).
Impeaching the President should be about preserving the Union, upholding the Constitution. Using impeachment to serve political purposes is crude and unwarranted.
And while there may be more Democrats in Congress, the fact that not enough are there to override vetoes automatically is a strong statement that while Democrats are the majority, their goals didn't sell overwhelmingly. That is, the system is still working, President Bush is still doing the job he (sorta) promised to do. And if you look closely, the Democrats are vocal for the media, if they really wanted to move things, they would move. Right now the Democrats are satisfied with not getting blamed for any (bad) legislation that gets passed, and they want the President to look bad in the polls. Yep. Democrats in Congress -- who do you think showed the online Trolls how to disrupt a community??
Posted by: Brad K. on July 10, 2007 1:45 AMTwill00-
IIRC, those recess appointments (both Clinton's and Bush's) weren't preceded by rejections of the appointees by the Senate; they were preceded by filibusters and/or other blocking techniques. I like the filibuster, but there is no Constitutional requirement that the President wait around for the Senate to stop "debating," when they have made it clear that they are going to sit on their hands and not provide advice nor consent regarding the appointment.
Also, there is no Constitutional restriction on recess appoints of rejected nominees. There are restrictions in the law (not the Constitution) on paying salaries to recess appointees in certain, uncommon cases.
Read what the Senate's research service has to say about it:
http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/RS21308.pdf
Brad: Since the writers of the Constitution gave impeachment power to Congress rather than the courts, and since those writers were in general not idiots, I think they intended that politics play a role in impeachment. However, since the process mirrors the court criminal process (indictment by the House, trial by the Senate, etc.), I think that the intention was that impeachment should only be for actual crimes provable beyond a reasonable doubt, with the addition of political decision making as to whether the crime was serious enough to justify immobilizing much of the government for months during the investigation and trial, and overturning a presidential election. Clinton's perjury about a blow job wasn't important enough. Since I haven't seen any evidence that Valerie Plame's status as a CIA agent had been effectively kept secret before, and the special prosecutor declined the opportunity to prove that there really was an underlying crime in the Libby trial, I don't think that outing her was important enough. Neither lying about WMD's (if that's what Bush did) nor fouling up in Iraq are crimes.
What is a crime and important enough? Thirty-five years ago, there was a conspiracy among White House staffers to steal an election, funded by bags of $100 bills out of the President's campaign funds. That's an attack on the fundamental institutions of our republic, even though in execution these guys seemed like The Three Stooges rather than the Mission Impossible team. Nixon's participation in that original conspiracy is unclear (if you accept that he could have been incompetent at running his own staff), but after they got caught in a bungled burglary, he definitely was part of the conspiracy to cover it up. I think that was certainly important enough.
Posted by: markm on July 11, 2007 8:37 AMCommitting perjury is indeed a violation of the law and reason for impeachment. Makign justifications about lying about something under oath in a courtroom which you deem to be a small matter is the reason why societies crumble. If we all get to choose reasons why we shouldn't tell the truth in a court of law, a place where societies depend on personal honest and integrity then we're lost. Yes, I think we are well on our way to being lost.
You can't always catch the person who commits perjury, but when you do the punishment needs to be severely harsh. Otherwise the court system falls apart as people pick and choose reasons why they should lie on the stand. People are already doing that. Having the leader of the nation do it and then have people defend his reasons for lying is causing plenty of problems.
If he doesn't want to lie about having an affair he shouldn't have an affair.
The same goes for Libby in this case. If the guy committed perjury he needs to be removed from office with stiff penalties. But let's not revist this whole thing.
Suffice it to say I think it's wrong to do intentionally lie under oath in a court room, while you think its excusable as long as you disagree with the subject matter. Now that's integrity.
Posted by: cdub on July 11, 2007 12:19 PMAs I have said before, if George Bush's theory of governance is not strongly repudiated by impeachment or other means, then I look forward to President Hillary Clinton sending abortion clinic bombers to Gitmo for "coercive interrogation." Or at the very least, firing every single Republican in the Executive branch all the way down to the janitorial staff and replacing them with Democratic partisans who spend all their time on partisan investigations of Republicans right before election time.
Since, you know, none of you guys have a problem with that sort of thing.
Posted by: Alan on July 12, 2007 12:41 PMThe old wishful thinking was that we could win an infantry war without infantry. The campaign for president, at least on the Democratic side, is based on another piece of wishful thinking, which is that we can withdraw from Iraq without any consequences to the Middle East or to U.S. interests. Democratic calls to end the war are going to crescendo sometime during 2008. The Democrats want President Bush to order a withdrawal so that when this policy fails they can blame the prior administration.
But nothing like that is going to happen. President Bush is going to use his powers as a lame duck to cripple any chance the Democrats have of ending the war with a quick withdrawal and blaming the Republicans for the chaos. He knows that the Democratic leadership lacks the guts and the votes to defund the occupation. He knows that he is now free to pursue the war any way he wants until January 20, 2009. He knows there is a good chance that Israel will launched offensive operations before November 2008 against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and/or Iran and change public expectations and fears in a hurry.
The Democratic Party, despite its many advantages, is more likely to implode than unite. The base won't support any candidate who is not committed to immediate withdrawal, but realities on the ground make such a policy politically unacceptable for the long-term health of the party. The only way to guarantee Democratic victory in 2008 is for President Bush to listen to the Democrats about withdrawals. If he persists in pursuing the war and does not withdraw any soldiers beyond regular rotations, a prudent and likeable Republican hawk will likely defeat a Democratic dove. The voters will talk like peaceniks and vote for national security, just like 1972. The Democrats will be angry and dumbfounded again, just like 2000 and 2004.
The only Democrat likely to pull off the electoral trick of uniting the prudent moderates and the looney left is Hillary Clinton. She is capable of running to the left to beat John Edwards and Barack Obama (by being a slight shade to their right), running as the "peace candidate" in the general election, parading a platoon of generals and admirals to sing her praises as commander-in-chief, and then turning sharply to the center.
If she wins the general election, we will stay in Iraq for several more years, though the tone of the news media will change the day after election day, just as it did in 1992. Mrs. Clinton knows that quick withdrawal means chaos in Iraq which will hurt national interests and her party for decades. The Clintons are masters of political calibration. The left will be betrayed again, like a rich and stupid mistress.
Posted by: Tertium Quid on July 12, 2007 3:03 PM