A few of the leftiest Democrats (led by Dennis Kucinich, the Keebler Elf of Cleveland) have been screaming for the heads of Cheney and Bush. Their impeachment demands are strong, and pure – “Cheney & Bush lied about intelligence, they pushed us into a disastrous war, they violated the Constitution with their wiretaps, they violated the Geneva conventions with their torture policies. Their abuse of signing statements is unprecedented. Their misdeeds are so much worse than Clinton’s “euphemism” stains on the Oval Office carpet! Impeach the bastards!!!”
I think that my lefty friends are mostly right about the failings and follies of Cheney (who pilots the Death Star) and Bush (who rides shotgun, but can't even fold the maps properly), but completely wrong on impeachment. I think that impeachment is an iffy proposition at best, and is likely to backfire on the Democrats, giving the GOP another 4 years in the White House. Here are my reasons:
First off, imagine the process itself. Kucinich has proposed that we start by impeaching Cheney, not Bush. I understand the reasoning - how can you hold Bush responsible for anything, the man can't get two sentences out without stumbling? And, if we first impeach Bush we end up with President Cheney (you know he's not going to resign). Try saying that again "President Cheney"!?!?
To bring impeachment proceedings requires a majority vote in the House of Representatives. It's improbable in the extreme that any Republicans would support an impeachment. It's possible, but unlikely, that 218 of the 233 Democrats would vote to impeach (only 28 Democrats have voiced support for Kucinich's proposal to date, after three months of the Keebler Elf’s arm-twisting). If the House votes to impeach, and a Cheney impeachment follows the path of the Clinton impeachment, the whole process of investigations, Senate hearings and impeachment vote might take several months (Ken Starr took 8 months). The Cheney impeachment might be over sometime in the summer.
If the Senate found Cheney guilty of high crimes & misdemeanors (liberals feel a delicious thrill at the sound of those words), and removed him from office, who would be picked to replace him? The most natural selection for interim Vice President is someone who has Washington experience, is well liked by Congress and has support from both parties. That would be John McCain (who else?).
With Cheney gone and Vice President McCain in place, Congress might continue on to impeach Bush, but I suspect that everyone (Congress and voters) would be tired of the whole mess by then. Bush might resign, or (more likely given his refusal to take any responsibility for the damage he's done to date), limp through his last few months in office. McCain, the increasingly popular caretaker Vice President-select would spend the summer and fall acting presidential - soothing the nation's partisan wounds (“I’m the Uniter!”), giving a lot of upbeat press conferences (McCain is the anti-Bush with the press - smart, glib and relaxed), spending a lot of time patching things up with Congress and (voila!) campaigning for election to President as the incumbent (with lots of free TV coverage!). In other words, impeaching Cheney would make McCain an even stronger candidate for President than he is now. And Pelosi and her Democratic Merry Men would have neutralized the strongest campaign plank that they had, which is “How do you like the job Bush and Cheney have done?” (if you impeach the bastards, you can't campaign against the bastards).
The second reason not to impeach is the "blow-back" (and no, this has nothing to do with euphemisms). It’s February 2nd, 2008. According to the 1/20/2009 digital Bush Countdown Calendar my sister gave me for Christmas (you can pick up yours here - http://www.bushslastday.com) we have 353 days and 4 hours until Bush and Cheney are gone (finally...). Americans are not so happy about things at the moment. The latest polls say that Americans want Congress to focus on the war, energy, the environment, immigration, social security, health care and the economy (especially the economy). Impeachment doesn’t make any list of top 10 American concerns. If the economy continues to worsen, or gas prices climb higher, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are going badly, Americans will lose patience with a Congress spending all of its attention on impeachment.
And Americans actually want Congress to work together, they are tired of all the bitter partisan bickering (unlike Rush Limbaugh or the Daily Kos, who know that partisan bickering is great for their ratings). It's safe to say that impeachment would not result in increased bipartisan warmth and camaraderie. My lefty friends (like most liberals) talk only to liberals, and listen only to liberals. The echoes of their own voices sound to them like an overwhelming national call for impeachment. Liberals (their own chops-licking schadenfreude notwithstanding) have no idea how little support there is for impeachment among moderates, independents and conservatives (scroll down to the end of this post to see the actual numbers). They also have no idea how much they sound like outraged GOP conservatives did in 1998 (maybe this quote from the way back machine will give you an idea) - “Dan Quayle took the stage today to decry the ‘national embarrassment’ of illicit sex and perjury committed by President Clinton…”. There's little difference in tone or self-righteousness between Newt Gingrich's anti-Clinton rantings and Kucinich's anti-Bush screed. (Kucinich and Gingrich - look, their names both end in “ich”!).
If Congress votes for impeachment, how would the public likely respond? Bush’s approval rating is in the 35% range, but Congress’s approval ratings are much lower (24%). I suspect that many of the 65% of Americans who today disapprove of Bush/Cheney would rally to support them if Congress moves to impeach (liberals may not believe this, but it’s hard for them to be rational about Bush/Cheney). Everyone - liberal, moderate and conservative alike - agrees that the GOP hurt themselves immensely (and helped Clinton) by impeaching him in '98. In the 1998 midterm elections Democrats gained 5 seats, not the result you'd expect if voters wanted to reward the GOP for voting to impeach Clinton the month before. The odds are that the best way to raise Bush’s opinion poll numbers (and further lower Congress’s) would be for Congress to impeach Bush.
Impeachment, as delicious as it might be for liberals, is a lousy idea. The best thing for those of us who want to see a Democrat in the White House on January 21, 2009 to do is to bite our tongues and let Cheney and Bush serve out the last few months of our national sentence. Leave the bastards in office, where they will do our liberal cause the most good.
Here are the numbers from 1998 polls showing the (lack of) support for impeaching Clinton, followed by numbers from 2007 showing similar support for impeaching Bush:
Clinton:
ABC News Poll. August 17, 1998
"If he does not resign, do you think Congress should or should not impeach Clinton and remove him from office?"
Should impeach - 25%
Should not - 69%
No opinion - 6%
Pew Research Center Poll September 19-22, 1998
"If it turns out that President Clinton lied under oath about having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, do you think that he should be impeached and removed from office, or not?"
Should be - 40%
Should not - 57%
Don't know - 4%
Bush:
LA Times Poll fall 2007 "As you may know, impeachment is the first step in the constitutional process for removing a president from office, in which possible crimes are investigated and charges are made. Do you think there is or is not justification for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush at this time?".
There Is Justification - 36%
There Is Not Justification - 62%
Unsure - 3%
CNN Poll spring 2007 - "Based on what you have read or heard, do you believe that President Bush should be impeached and removed from office, or don't you feel that way?"
Should Be - 30%
Should Not Be - 69%
Unsure - 1%
4 comments:
Who started the rumor that American voters want Congress to play happy politics together? ("And Americans actually want Congress to work together, they are tired of all the bitter partisan bickering..." John's blogspot, 2/2/08) I want the Democratic congress to kick butt, jam some liberal legislation through (like healthcare), and give W a public whipping for his abuse of our constitution. This Democratically controlled Congress has been a bigger disappointment to me than Bush ever was because he gave us exactly what I thought he would.
I do think that it is too late to impeach the bastards. But, I hate to see them walk away scot-free, laughing all the way to their cushy Halliburton, post-Presidential honorarium salaries. They have had 8 years of "we can do whatever we want and no one can stop us." What did he say? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice because the American people are easy to fool." I'm surprised that he hasn't quoted PT Barnum and told us that suckers are born every minute. At least with Barnum, we can use the elephant dung for some good compost! What are we going to do with the shit Bush has left us with?
Chrissy
My comment didn't post...I hate it when that happens! I won't put so much thought into it this time in case it happens again.
I'm a liberal, but I think there are better ways to spend time than dragging everyone through an impeachment. If it had been several years ago, yeah, maybe. I Seriously Resent being manipulated and lied to (I'm sure Colin Powell knows the feeling). The fact is that Bush came into office with Iraq on his agenda WMD or no WMD (Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack). I think it's worthy of impeachment, sure, but they're on their way out, and I think their legacy will do more damage than a possibly unsuccessful impeachment attempt.
I'm a liberal, and I DO want both parties to work together. I am sooooo sick of the knee-jerk reactions to anything the other side has to say (I admit I'm guilty of these reactions, too). It's childish and unproductive. When I was younger, I used to hate politics because it demands compromise. Now instead of viewing compromise as a sell-out I view it as diplomacy, which is a valuable commodity, and something this administration has had precious little of. Hopefully the next president will be someone I can respect even if I don't always agree with. I can't tell you how pleased I will be not to hear Bush's blithering anymore, and I fervently hope his successor can patch up some of the wounds he has rent world wide. He and Cheney can laugh all they want in the comforts they've achieved on the backs of others...I doubt it will be a joyous or genuine laughter. And as for what we should do with his remnants, Chrissy? Let's create some nice religious art with it!
~Polly
A NY Times editorial in yesterday's paper (Secrets and Rights, Sat., Feb. 2) speaks to the power of the Bush administration. Repeatedly, the Bush Clan has successfully argued to dismiss lawsuits filed against them for their egregious crimes against American and foreign citizens. Though it doesn't sound like impeachment is on their minds, it does look as though Congress has finally decided to fight back. Legislation has been proposed that will insist the Bush Whitehouse turn evidence over to Supreme Court justices in future "national security" cases filed against the administration. Still, I would love to see folks who were stripped of their rights "sue the bastards" come November. Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court will continue to think fondly of Bush long after he's gone, but I'd love to see just how secure Bush is once he heads back to the ranch. A future pardon would likely save his ass upon conviction, but does the constitution provide special immunity to a president once he/she is out of office...?
I was listening to a co-worker the other day. She was talking to someone else about the various candidates. She said she couldn't vote for Clinton because of Bill. "He lied. I just can't forgive him for that."
Her statement is indicative of how so many people feel. Clinton's "lie" is so important to them, while Bush's real lies go entirely unnoticed. I think that is because Clinton's lie is more pedestrian -- people can relate. They have faced that in their own lives in some way and their churches tell them exactly how they should feel about it. Bush's lies are too complicated for people to think about. It's too hard to sort out the truth from the fiction, too hard to sort out the morally correct path, too hard to know all the things.
The saying is that half the people are below average....sounds very sad. But I think that is one way people manifest a lack of critical thinking and fall back on the "moral training" they got from their religion.
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