All is forgiven, 54% of America!
By Thoreau
Churchill said that Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing after all other options have been exhausted. Well, check out the latest poll numbers: On the question of impeaching Cheney, 54% of adults, 50% of voters, and 51% of independents (i.e. swing voters in the 2008 elections) now support it. Those are admittedly hardly resounding majorities, but there are 2 points to consider:
1)Â The likely trend is upward.
2) Remember the last time we had an impeachment? The numbers in favor of impeaching were a measly 26% of the public. That didn’t stop them from impeaching. And the party that impeached against the tide of public opinion still retained the House in 2000, broke even in the Senate race, and got close enough to steal the Presidential race. All in all, not a bad showing for a party that defied 74% of the American people.
Also, 45% favor impeaching Bush. OK, not a majority, but as I said, the likely trend is upward.
So what are the Democrats afraid of? Let’s impeach!
First thing Monday, call your member of Congress. Today is George W. Bush’s 61st birthday. If we’re lucky, he can celebrate his 62nd birthday in an orange jumpsuit.
Hat tip to Alex Koppelman at Salon.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
July 6, 2007 @ 11:16 pm
Fuck that. Impeachment will accomplish nothing. You will not get a conviction. It will harm the Democrats chances; people certainly claim that it harmed the Republicans. The only thing that matters is putting people in place to block and undo the version of the Republican Party.
I don’t want justice. I don’t want to “reflect the will of the people.” I want power.
Comment by BruceB —
July 6, 2007 @ 11:38 pm
But refraining from impeachment won’t get us fair or honest media coverage or pundit commentary, and the public is figuring out more and more of the truth on more and more of what the Bush-Cheney crew are up to despite the chattering classes’ efforts to deceive them. If nothing the Democrats can do or refrain from doing will give them honest coverage, and if the public is figuring out stuff despite that, then it seems like proceeding may very well be sensible even though right now there’s no prospect of the effort succeeding in the Senate.
Comment by bryan —
July 7, 2007 @ 2:15 am
they are afraid that cheney will have a legal document saying that the vice president can only be impeached by himself.
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
July 7, 2007 @ 3:11 am
Impeachment would be a success in and of itself.
Comment by Matt Weiner —
July 7, 2007 @ 8:13 am
And the party that impeached against the tide of public opinion still retained the House in 2000, broke even in the Senate race, and got close enough to steal the Presidential race.
Your point is basically right, but this seems a bit off — the House started the impeachment drive before the ‘98 elections and managed to lose seats in the sixth year of an opposing Presidency, and then after the Senate took up impeachment they lost a bunch of seats in the next election (admittedly some of this was the weakest members of the class of ‘94 getting washed away).
I think it might be a good idea to impeach Cheney; everyone already knows Bush sucks, but having a nice long round of hearings on how much Cheney sucks could be a good thing. There won’t be a conviction but it could be nice. OTOH the media would throw a fainting fit about the partisanship of it all — the same media whose line on the joke that was the Clinton impeachment was I are serious commentator. This is serious proceeding.
Comment by Doug T —
July 7, 2007 @ 8:24 am
I tend to think impeachment would be a political loser, at least at this point, certainly any motion against Bush. I’d continue pushing hearings into abuses of power (like the FBI wiretapping, manipulation of pre-war intel, the DO firings, the illegal use of ideological standards for civil service firings, etc.)
If the admin continues to stonewall on these issues, start issuing contempt citations or impeaching lower officals who are openly defying Congress. Start working your way up from there, if the trail leas you up.
I think you need a smoking gun for impeachment against Bush or Cheney. There’s a lot of very suggestive pieces of evidence out there, but I don’t think it’s locked down enough for an impeachment to be popular. (Especially since you know the press would be totally, loudly, and virulently against such a “partisan move.”)
On a side note, what is the possibilityy for (assuming a Dem wins the White House in 08) bringing criminal proceedings against Bush or Cheney once they’re out of office, assuming you can find evidence they broke the law? (The FISA and wiretapping stuff is the obvious place to start looking.) A GOP President would of course continue the cover-up and pardon them if anything came out. But a Dem president would have access to the records and might not be willing to pardon them.
Comment by KCinDC —
July 7, 2007 @ 8:26 am
We could always start with Gonzales and see how it goes.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 7, 2007 @ 8:43 am
I don’t want justice. I don’t want to “reflect the will of the people.†I want power.
And this is why you should never have power.
Valid points about 2000, Matt, but the fact remains that an impeachment supported by 54% of the public will probably have fewer political consequences than an impeachment supported by 26% of the public. Looking at the numbers, if impeachment rallies the base and breaks even among independents, the Democrats win. Narrowly, perhaps, but they win.
As to smoking guns: We have an open acknowledgement of the FISA violations. That right there should be enough.
You want more? The Founders suggested that abuses of power that weren’t technically illegal could also be impeachable. Take Bush’s signing statement from the torture bill, where he basically said that he wouldn’t abide by it, and declare that a President who openly declares his intention to violate such an important law is committing a high crime against our concept of the rule of law.
You want still more? Hold a bigass hearing on how they lied their asses off about Iraq, and impeach for fraud. It may not fit the legal definition of fraud in a contract, but quote Madison’s thoughts on “maladministration.”
Then observe that Libby was pardoned for his role in the fiasco, and declare it an abuse of power.
If the hearings drag up enough dirty laundry, you might just get enough Republican Senators on board.
And if we don’t get enough Senators on board? Then we go down trying. These are the darkest days of the Republic since the Civil War. If we don’t at least try to remove these guys, then down the road some future President will realize that he can do absolutely anything that he pleases without consequence, and he’ll do exactly that. Maybe in the next administration, maybe in a few decades, but at some point. Unchecked power is always used, sooner or later. We might get some good people in office the next time around, but you don’t leave unchecked power lying around and then gamble that nobody will ever use it. You take that unchecked power off the table. This is not about whether a Democrat or Republican sits in the White House in 2009. This is about reminding every future President of what happens when you try to pull this shit. If there are no consequences, then even a Democrat might be tempted to go down that road at some point. The Shadow can take many forms.
So the costs of not trying to remove them are too horrific to contemplate. The costs of trying and failing are probably still severe, but the costs of not even trying are guaranteed to be horrific.
Comment by CharleyCarp —
July 7, 2007 @ 9:01 am
I’m a no on impeachment too. But an emphatic yes on continuing efforts to get the dirty laundry out there.
Comment by Barry —
July 7, 2007 @ 10:07 am
The other argument in favor of impeachment*s* is that the administration is ignoring subpoenas. This will not get better, unless and until there are consequences.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
July 7, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
And this is why you should never have power.
If you’re waiting for the mythical American Cato (do I remember this correctly?) who doesn’t want power, but only accepts it as his duty and to see the republic ruled properly, it might be a while. I think he’s catching a ride with the 12th Imam, who’s having car trouble.
Comment by moocat —
July 7, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
Remember that it takes a supermajority of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate to convict an impeached party. Brushing aside for a moment the bizarre notion that the officer presiding over impeachment of the Vice President might in fact be the President of the Senate (the Vice President himself), it doesn’t take a genius to do the math: There are only 48 actual Democrats in the Senate. Assuming that Socialist-caucusing-with-the-Democrats Bernard Sanders of Vermont would vote for conviction and that erstwhile Democrat and nominally “Independent-caucusing-with-the-Democrats” Joseph Lieberman would not, one would have to do some serious arm-twisting even to get a SIMPLE majority, much less a two-thirds majority.
I was almost persuaded by Thoreau’s latest post:
But then I realized that the result of such action would be two successive administrations in which a President or Vice President was impeached but not convicted with no real consequences.
Consider that our most recently impeached President was so affected by his impeachment that he… is currently the front-runner in what could well be his-and-his-wife’s THIRD term of office.
Comment by Nell —
July 7, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
SCMT: There’s nothing wrong with wanting power. What’s unacceptable is having no intention of reflecting the will of the people or achieving justice.
I’ve been a Democratic activist for decades, and I frankly don’t want the next administration, which I fully expect to be a Democratic one, to take power inheritig the expanded powers and implicit precedent of unaccountability from this regime.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 7, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
SomeCallMeTim-
What Nell said. I don’t expect a perfectly wise and saintly politician with no interest in power. However, a person who openly says that he doesn’t care about justice or the popular will, but just power, that is a dangerous person.
Dick Cheney might be interested in hiring you as an assistant.
Moocat’s point is a good one: If this fails, the Presidents might fear impeachment even less. That’s a fair point, but I’d rather take the risk of trying and failing than simply do nothing.
Yes, I’m aware that what I just wrote about trying rather than doing nothing comes suspiciously close to the excuses offered by bedwetters and warmongers of various sorts. The difference is that I’m not proposing that we drop bombs in civilian areas or anything like that. I’m proposing that we attempt to punish a crime, using lawful and nonviolent means.
If you don’t even try to punish the crime, the criminals won’t even try to hide it.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
July 7, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
What’s unacceptable is having no intention of reflecting the will of the people
I deny that such a thing exists in a sufficiently stable form to understand it as making decisions that require trade-offs, as between impeachment or a non-Republican Executive next time around.
or achieving justice.
I deny this has any universal meaning. I don’t think for a moment that Cheney, Kristol, et. al. think they’ve done wrong.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
July 7, 2007 @ 1:19 pm
If you don’t even try to punish the crime, the criminals won’t even try to hide it.
According to second-hand Leavitt, if you want fewer criminals, you don’t want more punishment, you want more abortions.
mcmanus is a nut, but he’s right (again) that there is a tendency on the non-Right, usually good but sometimes terrifying, to treat procedure as substance. Every Executive will want power. I want an Executive supported by a coalition that is uneasy with Executive power. At the moment, that means electing Democrats, and that has, to my mind, priority over any “doing justice” acts as regards the current Administration.
Put it this way: we just impeached a President for lying under oath (IIRC). Does that seem to have slowed his successors down?
Comment by Jodin —
July 7, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Help The Final Push to Impeachment
It’s time! ImpeachForPeace.org is traveling to Washington DC at the end of this month to deliver thousands of Do-It-Yourself Impeachment Memorials to key representatives in the House!
Support for impeachment is building. As of this writing, 14 reps are supporting Dennis Kucinich’s resolution to impeach Dick Cheney (H. Res. 333).
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You may not realize that the only thing standing between where we are today and a nationally televised impeachment investigation is the House Judiciary passing this resolution, which is currently awaiting consideration in their committee. The head of this committee, John Conyers, has said recently that he supports the national impeachment movement.
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Video of our trip will be posted on our website shortly upon our return. We’ll let you know when it’s up!
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Comment by Joshua Holmes —
July 7, 2007 @ 5:57 pm
Impeach, remove from office, send to The Hague, try, hang.
Comment by Jon —
July 7, 2007 @ 8:07 pm
Have Bush and Cheney ever testified to anything under oath?
Comment by halfhorsealligatorhalfman —
July 8, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
While the thought of an impeachment trial, presided by John J. Roberts, Jr., — it is the C. Justice of SCOTUS that presides, not the V. President, no? (Gore sure wasn’t wearing the gold accented robe in Feb ‘99) — is enticing, & the polls seem to favour it by more-than-half & growing, I think those who have commented, here, re: a backlash on the Democratic “inquisitors” are correct. Think how the media will portray the investigation & trial. It won’t just be a “partisan stagecraft”, but evidence of the Democrats’s ‘lack of conviction & finger-to-the-polling-winds legislating’. Just think how the Chris Matthews’s of the world have bought into W’s claim that he “doesn’t look at polls, doesn’t do just what is popular, but what is right in his heart”. (Dred Scott references at the ‘04 debates, et. al., beg to differ.) The DC reporters & pundits eat that slop up, & as they digest it, they credit ONLY the Republican chefs behind that recipe.
Already, as well, “poll-driven”, which is ‘bad’, is ONLY ascribed to Dems. An impeachment favoured by fifty-some or more percent IN A POLL, would only serve to make Tim Russert & the Georges (Stephanopoulos & Will) drive that ‘fact’ of Democratic insincerity AND Republican conviction (note: not the criminal sense) further into the voters’s minds. &, voila, Pres. Clark Griswold in ‘08. (That’s Romney, I mean. He’s C.W. to the boys at Wonkette.)
Comment by Ultima Ratio —
July 9, 2007 @ 8:10 am
How can anyone argue with a straight face that the fortunes of one political party over another are more important than bringing the man who lied this country into war to justice?
Comment by Thoreau —
July 9, 2007 @ 8:16 am
What Ultima Ratio said.
Comment by mds —
July 9, 2007 @ 9:51 am
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Oh, Thoreau, your wit is almost painfully dry. Not one single sitting Republican senator would vote to convict Bush if he bit the heads off the senator’s infant children. But Specter, Lugar, and/or Hagel might at least give a stirring speech before grabbing their ankles for the White House for the Nth time.
Good quote from back when George H.W. Bush pardoned everyone who could shed light on his own flagrant abuses of the rule of law and the Constitution. And it came true when people elected his son, and his son surrounded himself with Nixon and Iran-Contra operatives. As the evil screenwriter John Rogers put it, our system is implicitly dependent on a sense of shame, and the Supreme Court installed someone who has none.
Because the man who lied this country into war won’t be brought to justice by a failed impeachment attempt. And the attempt would fail. And perhaps that would be great political theater for the inside baseball crowd. On the other hand, this administration has lied us into war, has engaged in widespread torture, has publicly bragged about violating FISA, has disappeared people in cases that have made it up to the Supreme Court, and has formallly abolished habeas, and the public has yawned. But I’m sure something will come out during the impeachment hearings that will finally outrage them. Because during impeachment, the White House will suddenly start cooperating with Congressional investigations.
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
July 9, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
The discussion of impeachment of terribly frustrating for me. Lots of folks seem to think that Congress would just yell “impeach!” and jump straight into the proceedings. If the Dems had a clue (I know, sorry, major counterfactual there), they’d – quite deliberately – make the case for impeachment until even the media whores couldn’t stand it any longer.
.
But then there’s that “if.” As if.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 9, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
How can anyone argue with a straight face that the fortunes of one political party over another are more important than bringing the man who lied this country into war to justice?
Because Bush’s lies were the sort that politicians make all the time. Yes, they had far more devastating effects, I agree, but if you impeach him for making a dishonest sales pitch, you’re going to have to clean out Washington altogether.
Yes, I agree that would be a good thing, too, but I don’t think the people conducting an impeachment hearing would, and that’s the rub. If they impeach Bush for telling lies about Iraq (lies they should have seen through BEFORE the war, BTW), then they can be liable in the future for not fulfilling their campaign promises or misrepresenting a bill.
Like it or not the people reelected Dubya in 2004, when it should have been manifestly obvious that he was woefully wrong about Iraq. Now they can suck it up and wait until Nov. 2008.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 9, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
So what are the Democrats afraid of? Let’s impeach!
If things are going your way, it’s not wise to rock the boat. For one thing, unless there’s rock solid evidence against Bush or Cheney of an actual crime, the only this will do is energize the GOP base. True, that won’t cost the Democrats the White House, but it could cost them some seats in the House and the Senate.
In the long run, it’s good for the nation to stop the whole politics by prosecution business.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
July 9, 2007 @ 7:24 pm
Well…
This is why I’m scared of keeping the Reds in charge, but also scared of getting the Blues into power. I see very little in the way of signs that Blue Team leadership doesn’t share that desire very literally and wouldn’t be delighted to make use of the powers the Reds have won the presidency.
And reluctance to impeach seems to me of a piece with reluctance to take meaningful action against torture or the war. It’s not about lack of power, it’s about risking a loss of effective power. If the Blue pols piss off the congressional Reds still loyal to Bush by, say, refusing to fund any military spending in Iraq beyond a withdrawal, they know they risk more resistance to other legislative programs that they actually care about.
I’ve been skeptical of impeachment up to this point, but I think the comments of Thoreau and others here are changing my mind.
Comment by Derek Copold —
July 9, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
The Romans resorted to politics by prosecution, too. That didn’t exactly have a happy ending for them, or their liberties, for that matter.
Comment by mds —
July 9, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
Fine, Derek, Madison was a complete moron for endorsing impeachment as a political tool. We get it.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
July 10, 2007 @ 1:12 pm
Ergo, we should just cheerfully let criminals stay in power? Yeah, that’ll work.