But this government goes all the way to 11
By Thoreau
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Clinton impeachment, mostly because I’d REALLY like to see another Presidential impeachment. Yes, I know, it’s unlikely. But I’ve been thinking about the Clinton impeachment, and I am of the opinion that impeaching Clinton made it harder to impeach Bush.
1) They discredited the tool. No, I’m not the first to observe this, but I’ll bring it up anyway. Even if you are of the opinion that the impeachment was justified (and I am actually somewhat sympathetic, since at the end of the day he was under oath and he did lie), this was still hardly the way to do it. All of the investigations, all of the conspiracy theories circulated on the right, and all they could get was that he lied under oath about having sex with an intern? Come on! They couldn’t find something else in addition? No crimes of state? No dead bodies?
In the end, the case for impeachment, however legally sound it may or may not have been (I have no great desire to flog that dead horse), was politically weak. It was just a bunch of angry partisans who couldn’t find a crime of state so they caught the guy lying about sex with an intern. If the intern isn’t a dead girl or a live boy then the case is a joke.
So now impeachment, one of the most serious things in the Constitution, is nothing more than a partisan tool. Anybody who reaches for it winds up putting himself on the same list as Gingrich, DeLay, Starr, and the rest of that crowd.
2) An alternate explanation is that the impeachment didn’t really discredit anything. However, it is a gun that you can only reload once every generation or so. Once you fire it, you don’t get any more rounds for a while because the public is tired of it.
Either way, the result is the same.
Also, I think the impeachment says something about the approach to power that the Republicans took over the past several years: If you want to stop a President, you have to remove him. So if you can’t remove him, you can’t do anything.
Now, in some sense every gang of politicians will try to do as much as they think they can get away with. But everybody has their limits, defined largely by how far they think they can go before somebody stops them, and how much they’re willing to risk (be it jail time, political capital, personal re-election prospects, long-term prospects for the party, reputation, employment prospects after their term ends, etc.). This bunch basically said “We’ll go all the way to impeachment. This is what it takes. If there is no impeachment, the President can do anything he wants.”
If you refuse to be daunted by anything less than impeachment, then you’ll have no problem turning the government all the way to 11. Which is exactly what we’ve gotten.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
June 23, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
Look, GWB makes me long for Slick Willie, but it’s not merely that he lied under oath, but he was getting hummers in his office from someone way down the org chart and using his staff to facilitate and cover up these shenanigans. That would have gotten any executive at any company I ever worked for fired — if it came out, of course — the board or CEO might be willing to hush it up, but once the whole company knew, the guy would have been toast.
If he just slipped away to some Georgetown salon for a quiet affair, well, OK, none of our business, but he directly involved his job in at least three ways.
Comment by Flippanter —
June 23, 2007 @ 6:31 pm
Let’s not rehash the ’90s, but presidents are elected, not hired, and impeachment abrogates a political decision of the national electorate, rather than the hiring decision of a board of directors. It seems to me that impeachment ought to be rarer, and require more serious offenses, than tossing Chainsaw Joe Schmoe in the dustbin of economy. That it was pursued at tedious length in the case of Clinton and is acknowledgedly a forlorn hope in the case of the Double Ya! is a symptom of something bad.
That said, yes, the Slickster looks better every day in the reflected light of GWB’s supernova.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 23, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
Gene-I see your point. However:
1) Can you think of any way for the world’s most heavily guarded, most closely scrutinized, and most tightly scheduled person to quietly slip off to a Georgetown salon or whatever without his staff helping him with the logistics and coverup? It may very well be that slipping off to a Georgetown salon would have required greater use of Secret Service resources than simply letting an intern into the Oval Office.
Also, the participation of staff could be used could be used to make just about any personal sin of a President into a crime of state. “Secret Service had to look the other way while he rolled the joint/paid the hooker/attended the cockfight/whatever.” It’s not exactly satisfying to defend a powerful man’s right to engage in vices while federal agents look on, but if the distinction between personal sins and crimes of state is to mean something then we have to do this.
EDIT: On second thought, I revert to my original stance: I don’t want to refight the impeachment controversy. Let’s say that Clinton’s acts were impeachable. The fact remains that the manner of the impeachment, the fact that they chose the least of his alleged crimes, probably discredited the impeachment tool. So I withdraw what I wrote above, and I stick with the second point below:
2) Are we really to believe that sleeping with an intern and lying about it was the worst of Clinton’s misdeeds, and the most impeachable? Surely there must have been something else they could have gotten him on, if Starr and the Congressional Republicans had been more interested in curbing crimes of state rather than getting an enemy politician.
Flippanter is right: The fact that GWB is unimpeachable while Bill Clinton wasn’t is a sad state of affairs.
Comment by Derek Copold —
June 23, 2007 @ 9:14 pm
But what charge can you level at Bush? I don’t know of any. The perjury charge was to some extent a set up, but Clinton did break the law, and he did so knowingly. If he had cared for his country and his party, he would have come clean and offered to resign in Jan ‘98, when the affair became public. It would have put Gore into office (and probably assured his reelection). Hell, his wife probably could have still gone on to win herself a Senate seat somewhere.
The problem with Bush is that the closest thing we have to a crime is his lying us into war through false public statements (something all politician make at one point or another). Yes, ethically, that’s worse than perjury, but the American public had a chance to do something about it in 2004. Well, they essentially said they don’t much care about it. Four more years!
Sure, now that things have gone bad, they’ve changed their minds, but it’s too late. The only thing they can do is use their heads a bit more next election time.
As for being scared of the impeachment process, I have my doubts. If Bush were caught lying about his Christmas shopping list under oath, the Democrats would procede, and I bet the Republicans wouldn’t put up much of a fight, as it would give them a chance to disown Dubya in a more credible manner than what you see these days.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 23, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
If Bush were caught lying about his Christmas shopping list under oath, the Democrats would procede
Hell, I’d be willing to hire a hooker to administer a blowjob if I thought it would get him impeached.
Comment by Barry —
June 23, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
“Yes, ethically, that’s worse than perjury, but the American public had a chance to do something about it in 2004.”
Um, the American people re-elected Clinton in 1996, despite a sh*t-wave of accusations.
Comment by Derek Copold —
June 23, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
Yes, but he perjured himself later as a result of a scandal that surfaced in 1998.
The big complaint with Bush is his war policy. That is a matter for the voters to deal with.
Comment by Frank —
June 23, 2007 @ 10:33 pm
I see this argument all the time, which dismays me since I think its stupid. The Democrats don’t refrain from impeaching Cheney and Dubya because impeachment has been discredited. Its because they are gutless.
.
.
And if you think the Republicans would hold off from impeaching our next Democratic president, given even a half-plausible excuse your naivety would amaze me.
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
June 23, 2007 @ 11:55 pm
I think the real problem with both the Clinton and the Nixon impeachment processes is that they adopted and enshrined a “smoking gun evidence of narrowly criminal behavior” as the gold standard for impeachment. This wasn’t necessarily how impeachment was intended. Note, for instance, that the venue for judgment isn’t a court, but Congress. “High crimes and misdemeanors” could include sheer incompetence, or generally conduct injurious to the national good that rose to the level of treason or bribery (the words preceding ‘high crimes’). Thus I’ve run across a quote by James Madison essentially arguing that AttorneyGate is an impeachable offense:
(from America’s Constitution, A Biography, Akhil Reed Amar.) At the time, people didn’t agree with him, but I think the circumstances are more egregious now.
It’s time to revisit, extend, and frankly improve the whole idea of what constitutes an impeachable and convictable offense. Clinton’s perjury about a blow job: not injurious, not impeachable, not convictable. Bush’s lies about Iraqi WMDs, or abrogation of treaty and constitutional prohibitions of torture: injurious, impeachable, convictable. Bush’s breaking of FISA law: injurious, impeachable, convictable — even absent public disclosure of every aspect of “the program.”
Comment by Nell —
June 24, 2007 @ 12:45 am
Derek C: The big complaint with Bush is his war policy.
Um, no. The big complaints with Bush are:
- His putting into practice the “unitary executive” theory, in which the president has the powers of a dictator. Seven hundred or so signing statements are seven hundred smoking guns. Or, if you are going to be pedantic, at least the minimum of six cases demonstrated by the recent GAO report in which federal agencies followed Bush’s signing statements rather than the law passed by Congress are six smoking guns, while the others may be considered loaded guns with the safety off.
-His having broken the FISA law wrt NSA eavesdropping.
-His policy of global kidnapings, detention, and torture (as well as assassination) in contravention of U.S. law implementing treaties signed by the U.S. government.
-His unprecedented degree of secrecy and unaccountability, from the first moment in office.
-His conversion of the Department of Justice into a partisan tool, greatly weakening if not destroying the capacity of the executive branch to uphold the rule of law.
Do you want more? I could go on.
It makes me literally want to throw up when I see people wanting to rehash the Clinton impeachment in the face of the deeply criminal, corrupt, and organized assault on our Constitution by the regime now in power.
Comment by Nell —
June 24, 2007 @ 12:50 am
Oh, I almost forgot: Thoreau, your best post title ever.
Only slightly marred by your feeling the necessity to make an explicit reference to it in the post itself.
Comment by BruceB —
June 24, 2007 @ 3:03 am
AS a matter of law, it shouldn’t matter that the last time impeachment was used it was used stupidly and wickedly, any more than it should matter to my guilt or innocence of murder that Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer was the guy tried just before me. In pratice, it means that the prosecutors would need to show that this case matters, but that shouldn’t be hard to do. Nell’s list is by no means exhaustive; I’d add systematic, coordinated lying to Congress and the public (about a ton of issues) and gross incompetence and dereliction of duty with regard to Katrina and homeland security.
Comment by Gene Callahan —
June 24, 2007 @ 3:48 am
Thoreau, you make a good point about the impossibility of a president avoiding secret service complicity in any affairs he conducts.
Comment by Dave W. —
June 24, 2007 @ 6:27 am
Sex with a subordinate is a firing offense where I work, and that would be more true if I were the one making hiring decisions. Always has been.
In a better world, President Clinton would have done some jail time for his perjury. First, because people deserve to go to jail for lying under oath, and second because it would have set a good example for others who are thinking about lying to a court.
Drugs are a crime that is overpunished in modern society. Perjury woefully underpunished. We underpunish it so drastically and punish it at all so infrequently that people like T. think it is not a bad crime. Lying to investigators is one thing, but if you are going to speak under oath in a court proceeding, then you should tell the truth upon pain of serious punishment. I don’t just say that because Bill Clinton is involved here (I didn’t vote against the man twice!), but I feel this way generally and have since before the Clinton admin.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 24, 2007 @ 8:52 am
I think Thomas and Nell make the best case for impeachment.
Bruce-
I agree, it shouldn’t matter how the tool of impeachment was used last time, but politically it probably does.
Or maybe it’s just a matter of impeachment fatigue.
Frank-
Good point about them being gutless.
Comment by Mona —
June 24, 2007 @ 10:39 am
The first prominent person I am aware of to use the “impeachment” word for Bush (other than just for the Iraq war, whihc is not per se an impeachable offense) was Arch-conservative Con Law scholar Bruce Fein — in December of ‘05 when the wholesale violation of FISA came out.
FISA is a criminal statute, and carries prison time for its violation.
Comment by Matt Weiner —
June 24, 2007 @ 11:44 am
I think The Readers have a good explanation why at least some Democrats aren’t going to impeach. Nixon would’ve been convicted if he hadn’t resigned, because at the time Congressional Republicans could be shamed into voting against the head of their own party. Now, not so much. (This may be partly because of the Clinton impeachment, but the GOP’s blind loyalty to Bush — for at least the first six years — can’t be entirely explained by that.)
Comment by b-psycho —
June 24, 2007 @ 1:53 pm
In retrospect, I actually kinda suspect that the Republicans MEANT to discredit impeachment. Maybe they knew it wouldn’t work, and figured any GOPer that got in afterwards would have a blank check since the I-word would sound to everyone like hyper-partisan quackery.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
June 24, 2007 @ 3:02 pm
17: This is because Bush’s popularity has been weird — until recently, he’s had historically low but not unusual popularity. However, this broke down as very high support among Republican voters, and staggeringly low popularity among everyone else, which is very unusual. Eg., last year in March his approval among Republicans was 82%, so R. Congresspeople would have had to really defy their primary constituency to vote to impeach him.
The fact that he’s hitting Nixon levels of popularity, actually means that his support among core Republicans is finally starting to erode — he lost Democrats and independents a long time ago. Now his support among Republicans has fallen to ~70%, and if it keeps falling then I bet Congressional Republicans will desert him.
Comment by Nell —
June 24, 2007 @ 3:25 pm
Mona, you’re overlooking the point Thomas makes (citing others; I recommend his post, cited in his comment, and Sandy Levinson’s at Balkinization) that impeachable offenses do not have to be crimes of the kinds that could be tried in the criminal system.
Massive, avoidable human suffering caused by the president’s dereliction of responsibility, such as the handling of the Katrina disaster and the utterly feckless and corrupt conduct of the Iraq occupation, would qualify.
Comment by CaseyL —
June 24, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
It’s possible the Democrats in Congress are planning ahead, in case the next President is a Democrat.
The War Against Clinton didn’t start out as about sex with an intern. The War Against Clinton started out as Republican outrage that a Democrat had been elected in 1992. From 1968 to 1992, Republicans were President for all but 4 years, and the GOP decided that it “owned” the White House. That Clinton was elected in a 3-way race gave the GOP what it considered grounds for grievance (which I’ve never understood: sure, Clinton only got a plurality, but he got a bigger one than Bush I, so what’s the beef?).
Also, Republicans have come right out and said impeaching Clinton was revenge. Revenge for Nixon’s impeachment and resignation, and for Bork’s not being confirmed to the Supreme Court, and for John Tower’s not being confirmed as Secretary of State, and for Clarence Thomas’ grilling by the Senate.
The GOP is all about undoing the last 70 years of American political, social, and economic history. That means undoing the New Deal and Great Society; undoing as much as it can of the 60s and 70s (civil rights, feminism, gay rights, unionism and workers’ rights, environmentalism) – and getting revenge for all its losses and humiliations.
If Bush II is impeached, that gives the GOP another thing to want revenge for. If Bush II is impeached, the GOP will subject any Democrat elected President in the next 12 years to the same sustained, well-funded, relentless assault it mounted against Clinton.
Also, unless both Houses of Congress can impeach-and-convict in record time, impeachment won’t actually get rid of Bush, much less both Bush and Cheney. I don’t care if Bush’s approval hits single digits, the GOP will close ranks to keep impeachment and conviction moving too slowly to do any good. And then they’ll take it out on the next Democratic President by mounting another assault the day after the election is decided.
Now, I’m quite sure the GOP will declare war against a Democratic President in any case. But the Democratic Party might be thinking there’s no good reason to give the GOP another score to settle.
Comment by Wild Pegasus —
June 24, 2007 @ 8:24 pm
The GOP is all about undoing the last 70 years of American political, social, and economic history. That means undoing the New Deal and Great Society
Which is why discretionary spending under a Republican President and Congress exploded. Facts are confusing, aren’t they?
- Josh
Comment by ajay —
June 25, 2007 @ 4:15 am
Oh, right, Josh, because Bush’s spending has been all about helping the poor and disadvantaged. He’s a latter day FDR, so he is.
Comment by Avedon —
June 25, 2007 @ 6:24 am
Spending and expansion of government always go up under conservatives.
I’ve never heard a liberal say they believe in “big government”. The idea that liberals believe in “big government” and spend more money is a GOP talking point. That is, it’s a lie.
I think I’ll talk about Starr’s perjury trap at my own blog, but I do want to say that I’m surprised there are still people who belive this crap.
What’s truly significant is that most Americans understood that the impeachment of Clinton was wrong – Starr’s pursuit of Clinton was obviously harassment and the whole Whitewater/Jones/Lewinsky business would have been thrown out of court if it had happened to anyone else.
Yes, it was certainly the intention of the Republicans to discredit the whole idea of special prosecutors and impeachment, and to get revenge for Nixon and Bork, but all of that is irelevant. The American people didn’t want Clinton impeached because it was the wrong reason.
Bush is different. He has placed himself above the Constitution and the United States itself, and most people have noticed it, and they don’t like it. Bush has actually bragged about the fact that he’s breaking the law and continues to do so. There’s not even a need for an investigation – he has put it on the record that he recognizes no controlling authority.
Comment by Larry —
June 25, 2007 @ 1:59 pm
Mona,
To the extent that US Presidents can be held accountable to International Law, certainly Bush/Cheney can be impeached for invading Iraq. The fact that Congress authorized the War does not absolve them from violating the Geneva Conventions against unprovoked aggression.
Comment by Barry —
June 25, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
CaseyL, the one flaw in your argument is the supposition that Democratic forebearance now means that the GOP would not try to impeach the next Democratic president, if they could.
We’ve seen enough flip-flops (e.g., from ‘it’s not the sex, it’s the lying’ =>
‘no underlying crime means perjury isn’t criminal’) to know better.
Comment by Barry —
June 25, 2007 @ 5:12 pm
Comment by Dave W. —
June 24, 2007 @ 6:27 am
“Sex with a subordinate is a firing offense where I work, and that would be more true if I were the one making hiring decisions. Always has been.”
Tell me, Dave W, what happens in your workplace to people who conduct multi-trillion dollar frauds resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths?
The sheer moral depravity of somebody equating Clinton’s misdeeds with Bush’s never fails to make me amazed.
“In a better world, President Clinton would have done some jail time for his perjury. First, because people deserve to go to jail for lying under oath, and second because it would have set a good example for others who are thinking about lying to a court.”
So far, the number of right-wingers who really think that is about zero (I’m judging from Iran-Contra and Scooter’s amazing pitiableness).
And even taking you at your word, if perjury deserved jail time, what does Bush deserve?
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
June 25, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
CaseyL, the one flaw in your argument is the supposition that Democratic forebearance now means that the GOP would not try to impeach the next Democratic president, if they could.
Should Hillary win in ‘08, I take it as a given that there will be impeachment proceedings underway before the halfway point of her first time.
They’ll think of something.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
June 25, 2007 @ 6:56 pm
First term, I mean.
And yes, that presupposes a Republican-controlled Congress. Guess I should qualify: There will be widespread calls for impeachment over, oh, something or other, by the end of ‘09. I’d put money on it.
Comment by Thoreau —
June 25, 2007 @ 8:30 pm
End of ‘09? Try end of ‘08. They’ll be coming up with something to impeach over before she even takes the oath.
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Comment by Milo —
June 26, 2007 @ 11:19 am
The time I realized that the real motivating force behind the right wing was resentment was during the attempt to recount the Florida votes in 2000. The counters were in a glass-walled room, beginning to recount the paper ballots when a crowd of republican operatives (they were bussed in) stormed into the building, surrounded the room and began to beat on the glass walls with their fists, screaming at the terrified occupants.
The recount was abruptly canceled due to concerns for the safety of the counters.
Wasn’t that.. illegal? Isn’t it called intimidation? Why wasn’t that crowd dispersed? Why was no one charged in the incident?
In a word, incompetence – or worse.
This was a tantrum, a burst of fury and a direct assault on the nation. It’s far from the worst of their actions. I really do think that the Republican party has been taken over by anti-democratic authoritarians who are utterly contemptuous of the Constitution.
The real culture war is right here. There is one thing we liberals find sacred, and that is the Constitution.
I don’t think the country – and the pampered media journalists – get this yet.
Milo
Comment by darrelplant —
June 26, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
Crime and impeachment are completely separate issues. The House determines what the grounds for impeachment are. That can be a criminal act or any other act the House approves as articles of impeachment.
The House Judiciary committee addressed this explicitly in a report on the history of impeachment prepared before the Nixon impeachment hearings begain. This is near the conclusion of a section titled “The Criminality Issue”:
The report as a whole concludes:
Abuse of office and dereliction of duty (for whatever reason) are impeachable offenses, historically. They’ve never been used as the sole charges in presidential impeachments, but the number of data points is relatively low.
Comment by feckless —
June 26, 2007 @ 12:30 pm
YOUR WRONG.
You can argue the republican meme of impeachment exhaustion, but the numbers say otherwise.
A consistent and rising 30% of the people in this country think Bush should be impeached.
http://www.pollingreport.com/bush.htm
Thats more people than any longterm support for the Clinton impeachment.
http://www.democrats.com/clinton-impeachment-polls
And I can count the number of times the word “impeach” has been uttered on the MSM on one hand.
1 in 3 people are ready to impeach, from the grass roots.
100 million on the same idea without a national figure (sorry Kucinich), without a Limbaugh, without Gingrich, without Maureen Dowd, and without a criminally leaky grand jury investigation.
And all these polls were before he overruled the election of 2006 by continuing the war, before federal prosecutors, before cheney the chimera of government.
Watergate begat Iran Contra which begat Iraq. why? because its the same fucking criminals that are never punished committing the same fucking crime. The dems let Ford pardon Nixon, they let Reagan hide behind his alzheimers.
If they dont prosecute these people for their legion of crimes what will Cheneyinc. do to us the next time?
This is why the democrats have a reputation for being gutless, they repeatedly cower and backdown in every major political knife fight.
Comment by The Reaper —
June 26, 2007 @ 12:31 pm
If Bush II is impeached, the GOP will subject any Democrat elected President in the next 12 years to the same sustained, well-funded, relentless assault it mounted against Clinton.
They will probably do that anyway.
Comment by JustAnotherRat —
June 26, 2007 @ 1:47 pm
Frankly, I don’t want impeachment of Bush. He backs down when he doesn’t have his powerful allies behind him on issues. Cheney is one of the chief reasons for those backers. If I could see ANYONE in the Bush administration impeached or just outright thrown out of office, it would be Cheney.
As to the post by Comment by feckless —
June 26, 2007 @ 12:30 pm:
You’re correct. The history speaks for itself. Think about WHO is in the current administration and was present during past GOP excesses:
Nixon era: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Armitage, Wolfowitz, Perle
Ford era: GHW Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle
Regan Eroa: GHW Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, John Bolton, Negroponte
GHWB Era: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Armitage, Wolfowitz, Perle, Negroponte, Rice, Powell, Hadley
GWB Era: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Armitage, Wolfowitz, Perle, Negroponte, Rice, Powell (for part of term), Hadley
I find it remarkable that people actually didn’t notice these connections going into the administration, and certainly well after it was established. I knew people who thought that meant we were getting “experience.”\
If you REALLY want to know what makes a lot of these people tick and their backgrounds, I strongly urge reading “Rise of the Vulcans” by Thomas Mann. Fascinating reading and it give incredible insight into those within and those associated with the White House.
Comment by Jakob —
July 16, 2007 @ 5:57 am
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Unqualified Offerings. Thanks for informative article
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