Lots of talk about it, from folks generally outraged by the last 6.5 years of shenanigans in the Administration (which includes, for this purpose, the VP’s office). My thoughts?
Meh. From a practical standpoint, the chances of it actually happening between now and January 2009 are passingly small. Hell, look at Alberto Gonzalez. For all his buffoonery before Congressional committees, inane answers that made him look like either an idiotic liar or a cretinous half-drunken absentee manager, for all the responses that drove even Republican congresscritters to condemn him and call for his resignation — the Senate couldn’t muster the votes from the GOP to pass a non-binding “No Confidence” vote.
What do you think the chances are, in an election year-and-a-half, that the Republicans will actually treat the actions of the last six years, which encompass activities that they approved of and signed off on or stood by at the time and merely smiled and nodded about, as something worth removing the President (and/or VP) for?
Zilch. Zero. Zip.
And given that the majority of Democrats — and the American people — have gone along with it, too, makes it even less likely.
All impeachment proceedings would do at this point is distract from the Administrations actions, now and ongoing. It would become (or be made) the center stage, the focus, dragging on and on, and the argument would turn from “Was this policy/action by the Administration a sheer affront to what it means to be American” to “Should the President be impeached, or is this impeachment all about partisan politics?” (And, sadly, given their propensities, there would be enough Democrats trying to exploit it baldly and politically to give the suggestion legs.)
Unless Bush/Cheney actually do something to actively torque off Congress as a whole enough to act (which they’ve verged on doing at times, to be sure), or can get the President or VP to actually testify on the record and perjure themselves (which is how they nailed Clinton — and why they never have and never will get those two into such a situation), we’ll never see it happen.
(Do I think it should happen? Yes, ideally. But pragmatically, I think it holds too many risks, given the current situation and limited time to do it all in, even if it were likely that it could happen.)
So what can and should an outraged public do?
The best result would be to vote the bums out, to have this Administration so widely despised by the voting public that not all the election year shenanigans that the Administration can pull will be able to keep 2009 (and 2011 and 2013) seeing a Democratic president and Congress, akin to the post-Watergate backlash of ’76. That has its own dangers — I’m a big believer in not having single-party rule — but it would be the clearest, and most straightforward condemnation that could be given to Bush and Cheney and their cronies.
It might not be as satisfying as impeachment and carrying their figurative heads around on pikes, but it would be a lot more likely and a lot more effective at keeping this sort of thing from happening in the future.
One of the problems is that you no longer have GOP members of the House or Senate that have the ethical or moral standards of the GOP of the ’74. Anymore, the GOP is about what is best for the GOP and its benefactors than the Country as a whole.
As Olbermann said:
Without the GOP Congress willing to at least partially back the matter, any impeachment attempt is doomed. If, as you say, they’re all (or mostly) political hacks of the worst kind, we drop back to my suggestion: kick the bums out.
Which, if the Dems can avoid, for once, shooting themselves in the foot, may well be the best we can hope for, and not bad at that.
Similar arguments were used to head off impeaching President Reagan for Iran Contra.
Alot of the folks who are in the Bush Administration cut their teeth in the Reagan administration and learned a valuable lesson. The same tactics the Reaganites used–lie under oath and *dare* the congress and senate to do anything about it–well, those tactics are being used now.
If there are no consequences for this, it will continue to happen. The Bush administration is even more brazen then the Reagan administration because they saw the Reagan gang skate through. Imagine how it might be next time, when the mid-level Bush folks rise up through the ranks, as Rumsfeld, Cheney et al did from the Reagan years …
That’s the damnable thing about the Libby commutation. It has a more corrosive effect, IMO, than what happens to either Bush or Cheney, I believe.
I don’t discount your observation, Marn — there’s always a good excuse to “wait until next time and nip it in the bud then” (ignoring that it will be harder next, and no easier to spot it in advance).
I am such a naive American. I keep hoping for humiliations galore, but I know that’ll probably not happen unless the mother of all smoking guns is found. The best outcome is a lot of new faces in Congress and in the White House in 2008, so long as they’re not “24 Hour Political Party People” of either hue. I really don’t care, so long as they care more about the nation than the current crop of people do.
I would suggest they could hardly care less, but that sort of statement always brings chuckles from the Irony Gods.
The only problem with this is that people feel disenchanted with voting. Many from the 2004 election. They feel their vote makes no difference anymore. And it’s hard to explain to them how important voting is.
On top of this you have disinformation campaigns from those running for president against the other candidates which just confuse those voting even more. Think about Gore back in 2000 when he got blamed for saying “I created the Internet” and there were other mis-quotes as well. He never said or did half the crap he got pinned for.
And so when you are young and confused about whom to vote for you just say “F*** it!”.
I see this as the larger issue at play.
Difficult to argue with that. Though, again, I don’t think an impeachment attempt would be successful — and its failure would be as great a turn-off, if not moreso.
Rrg.
I wonder if the increasingly frequent suggestion that the president should be impeached is causing us to take impeachment less seriously. It’s been suggested that Bush should be impeached, and there was an attempt to impeach Clinton. I don’t remember: was there any talk of impeaching Bush Sr.? There was talk of impeaching Reagan as Marn mentioned above. So that’s at least three of the last four presidents who were considered for impeachment. Maybe the increasingly partisan nature of our national political discourse has led us to take impeachment less seriously than we should. On the other hand, perhaps politicians have become less honorable, and they all deserve impeachment using an older and higher standard of political morality.
If Walsh had been allowed to complete his Iran/Contra investigation prior to George I pardoning everyone, most likely there would have been calls for his Impeachment.
Yes, this is very much the case, especially since you have one family that has been deeply involved in profitting from evil since before WWII. They and their minions have no honour nor do they have any shame, all they care about is power and the almighty Dollar – All else and go Cheney themselves.
I do think, Dave, that the “impeachment” has become too easy a charge to throw around — to the point where I think a lot of people don’t take it seriously. There were folks suggesting Dubya should be impeached before he even assumed office (over the whole Florida thing), and as soon as there was discussion of war in Iraq, a certain fraction of the Left made it a steady, regular chant.
At one point, a call to impeach would have been so outrageous it would have, itself, given someone pause to think, “Wow, what has X done that has this accuser so riled up?” Now it’s become instant rhetorical background noise amongst the fringe opponents of whoever is in office, which is a real shame.
Were I conspiracy-minded, I’d almost think the whole Clinton impeachment kerfuffle was not a horrible overreaction and unintended cheapening of the political process, but a cunning scheme by some to intentionally cheapen the whole impeachment process and make those who call on it (of the other side) petty and partisan.
Wow ***Dave, you are really devious and cunning!
The only downside to that is that once impeachment is so cheap that the other side can’t use it, neither can you. But if you regarded your party as more likely to sustain serious harm by an impeachment or by the threat of an impeachment, that might be a good tradeoff!
How very Machiavellian!
Yes, well, if you plan to connive your way into being in power and staying there, then making impeachment “so cheap” only works to your favor …