Friday afternoon impeachment talk

November 17, 2006

Guest Post by Michael J.W. Stickings

Alright, I’ve been a bit tough on Pelosi lately — first on Murtha-Hoyer, then on Harman. I trust I haven’t gone so far as to imply that I think she’s “a bitchy, vindictive shrew incapable of leading because she’s consumed by petty personal bickering rather than serious and substantive considerations” (in the words of Glenn Greenwald, addressing her Beltway critics). I disagree with at least two of her personnel preferences, but I’m not about to join the “Dump Pelosi” movement. The Democrats can and will move on from this to what I anticipate will be a positive legislative period in the majority (even with Republicans trying to block their every move).

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I wanted to mention a provocative post I read yesterday at The Mahablog. It concerns — gasp! — impeachment. Barbara’s for it, just not now:

I believe strongly that Bush and Cheney should not be allowed to serve to the ends of their terms if they continue to operate outside the Constitution and ignore the laws of Congress. Congress must not allow extra-constitutional precedents to be set, which is what they will be doing if they simply wait out Bush. For the sake of the Constitution, history, and future generations, proper separation of powers must be re-established in the next two years.

However, I’ve been around the block enough times to know that unless impeachment has widespread popular support, and support among a substantial number of prominent Republicans, there will be a nasty backlash that could put the wingnuts back in power. And as unpopular as Bush is, I don’t think the public or many Republicans are ready to get on board the impeachment bandwagon. Yet.

Here’s my plan:

Before we chant the “I” word, everyone interested in reining in Bush — whether you call yourself a liberal, progressive, leftie, Democrat, libertarian, neomugwump, whatever — should be chanting the other “I” word — Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.

Congress must confront Bush on Iraq. Congress must use all of its Constitutional authority under Article I, Section 8, paragraphs 11 -14, and insist that U.S. policy will be a withdrawal. No delays, no excuses, no signing statements. Bush should be given a deadline for the withdrawal to be completed, and that deadline should have a firm 2007 date…

So, Congress should make a bipartisan demand that Bush order a withdrawal from Iraq. And if he refuses — and I am certain he will — then impeach the bastard. Then American people will understand why it has to be done, and they will support it. And if the effort is seen as bipartisan — as was Nixon’s almost-impeachment back in the day — there won’t be much of a backlash. Instead of being viewed as just more tiresome partisan bickering, the effort will be remembered as one of America’s finest hours.

I’m generally not in favour of establishing a firm deadline for withdrawal, mainly because I don’t think the military should be so strictly constrained and because I think America owes it to the Iraqi people not to leave their country open to anarchy. It’s been a horrible war, but it can and will get worse, and I think a flexible phased withdrawal combined with increased efforts to build a sustainable infrastructure with some regional support could be a suitable compromise.

But Barbara has a point. Bush does need to be confronted on Iraq, and the new Democratic Congress is in a position to do just that. But what if it plays out as she anticipates? Is impeachment — however impractical now, however much it may be “off the table” (Pelosi’s words) — a viable option? Do you support impeachment now? If not, would you support it given these conditions? Or would you be against it even then?

Impeach Cheney First and Soon!

  • Here’s the problem with impeachment: If Bush goes, we’re left with Cheney. Or, if Cheney goes, Bush can bring in someone like McCain, giving him a boost for ’08.

    Regardless, I see impeachment as something of a non-starter (although, again, Barbara lays out important conditions). Should the Democrats pursue impeachment even if there’s no chance of conviction?

  • Investigate how we got into the war. If they lied us into it, impeach them. Period.

    Anything else is a green light for the next war criminal.

    BTW, I don’t think impeaching Bush for “not agreeing to withdraw” is viable. Not enough support for that. But if he lied (which appears to be quite probable) and if it’s finally proven that he lied, then there would be very few people who would say leave him be.

    We must not allow that kind of crime to stand if it occurred. If we do we are all culpable.

  • If the Downing Street memo is accurate, Bush and Cheney should both be impeached. Who is president after that is of lesser importance than the fact that the American Congress arrested a pair of war criminals. What that would tell the world would be very, very important.

    The talking heads say there’s no appetite for an impeachment, but was there one before Nixon was investigated?

  • What I recommend is having Stephen Colbert do a section each week defending the President, listing the offenses found in the investigations. Bush’s policies would be comic if so many lives had not been lost.

  • was there one before Nixon was investigated?

    No. Nixon won re-election in a landslide in 1972, remember. When he resigned in August 2004 his approval ratings were in the 20s, I believe. The investigations and hearings — much of which were televised — changed people’s minds about Nixon.

    BTW, the Democrats picked up a nice chunk of House and Senate seats in the 2004 midterms. But the important thing to remember is that Republicans in the House and Senate got on board with investigating Nixon, and most people didn’t see it as partisan warfare. Nixon resigned because some senior members of the party told him they couldn’t and wouldn’t protect him from impeachment.

    Hearings and investigations. Lots of ’em. Televised. Let’s do it.

  • Unfortunately Mr. Stickings, Iraq is already “open to anarchy.” I mean, what the hell do you think has been going on there the past six months? Even Abizaid says it’s all going to fall apart in 4-6 months and he’s a conservative.

    Humpty-Dumpty is broken, and all King Bush’s wingnuts and all Speaker Pelosi’s Democrats can’t put Humpty-Dumpty together again, a crime for which they should all pay.

    Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, thinking of the future) there is not ever going to be the kind of widespread public support to impeach either one of those bastards. And even with the support we had in 1974 against Nxon it wouldn’t have been enough, since it wouldn’t have taken out and neutralized all the king’s men – as witness who we’ve been fighting since about 1984.

    Sorry to be a pessimist, but them’s the facts.

  • I’m for impeachment of Bush and Cheney right this very minute, for war crimes, illegal wiretapping, and destroying habeus corpus, among many other things.

  • Re: The Spectre of The Cheney in The Oval Office.

    I’ve been giving this some thought and reached the following conclusion: Yea, and?

    Everyone already hates him and he knows it. I think he likes hiding behind his sock puppet and wouldn’t enjoy being out in the open. Like a quail. Or a fellow hunter… Besides, at this point I don’t see how it could get any worse short of nuclear war or some an attempt to start a ground war some where else on the planet. As an added bonus, his open support of his daughter would drive off that pack of rabid, unwashed hyenas AKA The Base.

    At the end of two years of his snarling mug giving the SoU and shouting go fuck yourself at everyone we’d have a ReThuglican party that would take decades to recover.

    As for impeachment in general…someone posted a few days ago that investigations. Investigations will turn up crap that can’t be spun off. In addition I’d be shocked if Monkey doesn’t do something that is blatantly illegal/impeachable in the course of his dealings with his new Senate. I’m looking forward to the melt down…provided it doesn’t mean we all glow in the dark.

  • Don’t bother with impeachment. It will waste a year — and, even if the House votes to impeach, it won’t get through the Senate. We don’t have the numbers to do this. Conversely, if we proceed with impeachment, the Repugs will circle their wagons, and Bush will no doubt portray himself as a persecuted president. His popularity would probably go up, and give the next Repug candidate an unnecessary popularity boost. And, in the meantime we’d have Cheney as Prez. Yuck!

    I say nibble ’em to death with hearings and blue ribbon committees. Once all this muck is exposed to the light, it will create a public relations burden that the next Repug candidate for President will have to carry.

    –Beo

  • Impeachment will waste a year, and it wouldn’t get past the Senate. We don’t have the votes. Conversely, if we proceed with impeachment, the Repugs will circle their wagons, and the Prez can portray himself as a persecuted martyr. The next Repug candidate for President could use that as public relations boost to his candidacy. Even if we win, we lose with Cheney temporarily as President. Yuck!

    I say nibble them to death with hearings, subpeonas, and blue ribbon committees. The muck that’s exposed will have such a putrid stench, that it will be incumbent on the next Repug Presidential candidate to spin and twist to avoid stepping in it. Don’t waste time with impeachment. There’s more important ways to attack these suckers…

  • I’ve been giving this some thought and reached the following conclusion: Yea, and?

    Yea, and there’s a lot of regulatory power that comes with the Oval Office. Bush hasn’t needed Congress to gut FEMA, weaken environmental protections, silence the scientific community, sidetrack NASA, turn the media into a propaganda tool, or perform any of a thousand other insults to our democracy.

    And Cheney’s worse – he’s the architect of all of the above. If you can only impeach one, impeach Cheney.

  • I think Racerx has it about right. No point to impeaching him because he got us into a bad war. What Congress SHOULD do is investigate dilligently the way we were led into that war and if it becomes clear that we were deliberately duped to enter the war, then we must impeach. I can’t imagine, though, that it’s going to be that clear cut. Nothing ever is.

    The goal here should not be retribution, as satisfying as that would be. It should be restoring health to the process of government–which need is critical. This Administration has a terrible, terrible disrespect for so much of what this republic is about. I don’t need to enumerate them for anyone who is a fan of this website, but we can’t allow our personal disdain, revulsion, anger–pick your word–for these men blind us to the fact that our work must in large measure be the job of UNDOING what damage they have done. Not for the pleasure of it. but because our nation and our children’s nation and the world needs it.

    If we impeach without evidence that a blind man can see–we’ll just sow the seeds of more impeachments down the long road of history. Is that what we want our future to be? I have always suspected that Clinton was in part payback for Nixon. Do we want to turn our government into two warring camps that use the power of the majority into a weapon to repay old injuries? That isn’t government–it’s no better than what you’d find in some pisspot dictatorship. Let’s at least rise above the level of Haiti and Liberia.

  • The goal here should not be retribution, as satisfying as that would be. It should be restoring health to the process of government–which need is critical.

    Absolutely right.

  • While I believe that Bush and Cheney have each committed many impeachable acts, I don’t support impeachment unless there are enough votes in the Senate to kick the criminals out of office. I don’t think there is any chance that even 20% of that support exists right now, maybe investigations over the next year will bring out enough new evidence to change that.

  • With a Dem Congress, I’d be satisfied to investigate the hell out of pResident Bozo and Darth Cheney. Then, just as their disastrous term is up, indict them for treason (lying us into a war) and war crimes and imprison them. Justice must be served and we can’t settle for, nor can we wait for, the judgement of history.

  • Not to keep this fight alive (too late), but for me, it wasn’t about dumping Pelosi, but about dumping on Pelosi. There’s a big difference between criticizing someone’s decision and criticizing the person. I mean, why repeat the garbage that she’s doing it for personal reasons or whatever? Why bring the fight to her? We can still disagree with a Democrat without impugning their motives or attacking them. Or was I mis-reading what you meant you spoke of “messed up priorities and signs of questionable leadership.” And was your suggestion that”she needs to look beyond herself” not a implication that she was being selfish or petty?

    You might not think she’s a vindictive shrew, but you’re repeating many of the same lines as those who do. For Dems to stay in power, we need to do better than that. It’s ok to disagree with Pelosi, but don’t repeat the smears against her.

  • I think some official government body sometime is going to have to publicly repudiate the illegalities Bush and Cheney have participated in. It doesn’t have to be impeachment (although the Repubs knew Clinton wouldn’t be removed but they still wanted the impeachment) there is censure, resolutions, etc. (What are the options?)

    But if it isn’t made officially wrong these actions will set precedence.

  • Oh, and as for impeachment, I’m pretty much against it. Sure, there’s the Cheney issue, which I think is much bigger than most people realize (if nothing else, just recall the people who praised Bush for not cancelling elections and then remember that Cheney doesn’t care about such praise). But I just don’t think it’s necessary. I’d rather keep him in the dunking booth and make the little bugger take his medicine. Impeachment will only harden conservatives and Republicans and lower the bar of impeachment even more (in their eyes); while a thorough humiliation would do much better. Impeachment will only make him a martyr.

    But then again, if we got rid of Cheney first, I might reconsider.

  • Then, just as their disastrous term is up, indict them for treason (lying us into a war) and war crimes and imprison them. Justice must be served and we can’t settle for, nor can we wait for, the judgement of history.

    Yep. It also would satisfy the people who have suffered far more from this ShrubCo’s idiocy than any American has. America has always prided itself on setting an example for the rest of the world. Under Bush the lesson has been: Fuck people over and laugh about it. It needs to be: Even our leaders pay when they break the law.

    Impeachment won’t mean jack in the long run, especially to the Iraqi people. It will be seen as some sort of symbolic flummery, typical American B.S. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice in prison orange? That might put a few smiles on people’s faces. Learning the above have had their assests stripped and the money will go into a reconstruction fund? That would be even better. Think about it. 100 years from now school kids will read about this period (assuming the Neo-Cons don’t control the schools). If they read that all that happened was some people were impeached, they’ll think we were a bunch of weenies.

    I guess I’m saying that when I weigh my grievances against these jackasses against those of the guy sitting in half a bombed out house, or who got dragged out of his home and half way around the world to Gitmo because his name sounds kind of like Osama bin Laden, I know that impeachment might give me a warm fuzzy, but my warm fuzzies don’t count for shit.

  • Investigations first, plus corrections of laws and passage of new laws to prevent future repeats of Bush’s behavior.

    Bush & Cheney deserve impeachment for Bush’s signing statements, torture, warrantless wiretapping, and overturning of habeas corpus, as well as lying to get us into a war. However, the last is the hardest to prove, as it is subject to interpretation and ambiguity. I don’t know if various laws passed by congress have given Bush enough cover on the other issues. Again, investigations first, and then we’ll see where we stand politically. Perhaps a motion of censure.

    I’d be perfectly happy removing Bush before Cheney. Cheney is highly unpopular, and now has little political strength left. He’s gotten away with a lot because no one ever expected the VP to have much power, so oversight functions, reporting requirements, and the glare of media spotlights that are all focussed on the presidency tend to miss the VP, so we’d be better getting him out in the open. Also, with any luck, the additional stress from the new job would do him in.

  • I support impeaching bush & cheney not out of retribution, but because I believe they have broken the law on several different occasions. The major thing to establish is that impeachment is not politically motivated retaliation. Holding the president and his veep accountable is necessary; it begins with investigations.

    It is argued if the dems introduce the big “I” with only 2 years it cuts time on passing needed legislation. So weigh the options: impeach bush and pass legislation reigning in “unitary” executive powers to prevent the current and/or future presidents from becoming an authouritarian ruler or stick to investigations and write sensible legislation. Of course that insinuates democrats cannot chew gum and walk at the same time which is not the case.

    MSN having all but framed the issue in terms suggesting impeachment would be considered politically motivated retaliation necessitates reframing the issue in language that doesn’t mislead the public. Before impeachment can be brought to the table investigations must provide solid evidence for Americans.

    IF dems have the confidence and backing of the electorate they might go full steam ahead with impeachment hearings, but not without public pressure.

    The republican party gave Bush powers that should not be in the hands of any one man regardless democratic or republican. Impeachment hearings must be held with a modicum of respect and not turned into a fiasco–like the clinton hearings over a blue dress. Who gives a flying-flip whether he got a little in the WH as compared to a man who took America to war wittingly on fictitious intel.

    Furthermore Bush pushing laws so antithetical to the Constitution illustrates a lack of understanding the tenets of the Constitution. For example: The Military Commissions Act is very disturbing. Bush has been given the power to deem anyone, anywhere, at any time, an enemy combatant including American citizens. The suspension of habeas corpus, an 800 year old law strips Americans of their Constitutional right (forget innocent until proven guilty) to seek legal redress in the courts is sobering and alarming. With glaring absence of honour and rectitude for well-established traditional laws Bush & Cheney continue to push laws and legislation that weaken our Constitution.

    Impeachment must not be portrayed as political punishment. Instead impeachment will hold the executive and all others involved accountable for breaking international and domestic law, just as it should be. If hearings do not take place what kind of message does that send to future presidents? How much further would he/she push the boundaries? Bush and Cheney have two years left, how much further will they go?

    Better yet, how much more will the public allow ?

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