The Case for Impeachment

Kos says that we should not seek the impeachment of the President. I think we should. I think we must.

Before I get started explaining my position, I want to make a couple preliminary points. First, barring unforeseen events or disclosures it is very unlikely that the House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee will begin an inquiry into articles of impeachment until after the 2006 elections. Aside from the strictly partisan impact of Republican control of the House, there are no clear cut charges to bring. And while I can make a laundry list of reasons to fire the President, I have a harder time pointing to specific laws that have been broken and establishing responsibility for those crimes in the Oval Office.

Secondly, there should be no effort to impeach the President that does not include a simultaneous effort to impeach the Vice-President. In fact, Cheney’s role in the most egregious mistakes and potential crimes of this administration are so central that I would argue Bush could eliminate the need for impeachment by forcing Cheney to resign.

Taking these two preliminaries into account, I will make the case for impeachment below the fold.

Opponents of impeachment throw up some predictable arguments. The most obvious is that we don’t have the votes to succeed in an impeachment process. And, as the impeachment of Bill Clinton showed, it is a fruitless and divisive thing to embroil the country in impeachment proceedings if you have no hope of succeeding. It distracts the administration, which can lead to major policy mistakes, and it could lead to enemies of the United States taking advantage of our distraction to harm our national interests, or even to attack us. I agree that we should not start impeachment hearings unless, and until, we have a reasonable expectation that they will result in the conviction and removal of both the President and the Vice-President. But that leads to a second consideration.

Opponents of impeachment like to argue that the American people and/or the mainstream media, will never support it, and it will cause a backlash. That is probably true today, but it may not be true tomorrow. If the Democrats win one of the houses of Congress back in 2006, we will regain the chairmanships of all the committees in that house and will we have subpoena power. The ability to initiate investigations, obtain sworn testimony, and charge uncooperative witnesses with contempt, should lead very quickly to several rock solid rationales (counts) for impeachment.

If I was not extremely confident of that fact, I would not support an effort to impeach the President and Vice-President. In other words, I believe the evidence exists to make the case for impeachment, that the evidence is readily obtainable, and that the only thing preventing the unveiling of the evidence is the GOP’s control of both houses of Congress (and to some degree, the timidity of the press).

Another argument made against impeachment is that our country is supposed to deal with power changes through elections. The country has been harmed by recent efforts to subvert the results of elections (excessive gerrymandering, the impeachment of Bill Clinton, the Supreme Court’s 2000 anti-Gore fatwa, the Gray Davis recall, Tom DeLay’s off-year redistricting plan). Never mind that almost all of these election subverting actions have been carried out by Republicans, we shouldn’t get into that game. Or so the argument goes. I have two things to say about this argument.

The Bush administration is presenting the American people with a crisis. It is a crisis that is similar, although more serious, to the crisis we faced over the 2000 election. It’s a crisis that our nation is ill-equipped to deal with. The policies and competence of this administration are so detrimental to our long-term national interests that there is no question that we can suffer three more years of their leadership. Yet, there is no way for the Republicans to join us in a vote of no confidence…as might happen in Britain. Impeachment or resignation are our only remedies.

The second thing I have to say is that we are not obligated to respect the primacy of the electoral process in the face of wanton criminality and incompetence. We should have a much higher standard than perjury in a frivilous civil lawsuit, over a matter that is not a crime. But we cannot abandon the threat of impeachment as a deterrent and remedy for serious criminal activity. To fail to impeach the President and Vice-President in the face of evidence that I consider to be readily available (if currently suppressed) would be to make the Executive an extra-legal branch of government.

Kos makes some different points. He first asks whether we want Dick Cheney to be President. The answer is ‘no’ and under no circumstances. Let me reiterate: Dick Cheney must be impeached, convicted and removed from office or he must resign. That is the minimal remedy to our current crisis. In the process of carrying out the investigations that will force Cheney from office, it is likely that reasons to demand Bush’s resignation will arise as well. And if that makes Dennis Hastert the 44th President, so be it. If it ever comes to that, the House can appoint anyone to replace a member, elect him speaker, and elevate him or her to the Presidency. If we ever reach that level of constitutional crisis, we can make anyone we want President. So, the idea that we shouldn’t remove Bush and Cheney because it will result in a Hastert presidency is a strawman argument.

Kos also makes a rawly political calculation, using the scandals surrounding former Connecticut Governor John Rowland as an example. Rowland was forced to resign over his corruption and things looked bad for the CT Republican Party. But his replacement, the Lt. Gov. Jodi Rell, pleased the Connecticut electorate and is now the most popular governor in the country. The logic, then, is that some Republican might replace Bush, do a very good job, and prevent the full deserved backlash the GOP has coming.

My answer: I doubt that Bush will be forced to resign before the 2006 elections, and the weaker he is the more likely it is that the deserved backlash will occur. So, I see no conflict in pursuing impeachment as a meme, and investigations as a need, during 2006. This should be pursued by some of our most partisan backbenchers, by the grassroots and blogs, and by some of the more radical MSM partisan columnists. It should not be part of the leadership’s message. At least, not with the current set of facts.

Kos refers to a Chris Bowers’s essay on the likelihood of a historical realignment (a la 1974, 1980, or 1994). Bower’s analysis is solid. Bowers argues convincingly that one of the historical factors in realignments is an extended period of unpopularity of the President in power. The prospects look good that George W. Bush’s popularity has permanently sagged and that there is little chance of a major resurgence in his poll numbers. Therefore, if he remains in office we can expect the Republican Party to hemorrhage badly in 2006 and 2008. Therefore, we should leave him in power and reap the benefits of his unpopularity. I have to say, that it is tempting to accede to this strategy. It seems like a safe-bet. But I have a huge number of problems with this analysis.

I have already mentioned the crisis Bush’s leadership poses for the country. I have mentioned the necessity of punishing criminality, provided it meets a serious enough threshold. But there is more:

Bowers’s strategy translates into more than not pursuing impeachment. It translates into not pursuing the truth, not pursuing justice, not dealing with a crisis. And it therefore translates into more mealy-mouthed talk, more ignoring incriminating evidence, more attempts to chide this administration into legal and responsible policies. We can’t avoid becoming apologists for this administration if we ignore our core beliefs that they should not remain in power. We can’t pretend to be looking out for the best interests of the nation if we refuse to pursue the one thing that is necessary to stop the bleeding.

Kos concludes:

I believe the Republicans will resist being destroyed by this President. We are already seeing the first signs of rebellion. There was a point during Watergate, after the GOP had taken a severe beating in the 1974 elections, that Sens. Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Rep. John Rhodes, went to the White House to tell the President he had virtually no support left, even among members of his own party. I expect something similar to happen in 2007.

I’d argue that (provided the Dems gain a house in the 2006 elections) it is even more likely that Bush will be forced out than it was that Nixon would be. Nixon was seen as competent. Bush is not seen as competent. He will have less good will from Congress, the media, and the public.

It’s tempting to hold out on pursuing impeachment, hoping that Bush’s unpopularity and performance will lead to a major political realignment returning the country to more progressive policies. The problem is that Bush is harming our country so severely that we have a responsibility to stop and reverse his policies. We cannot ignore this responsibility without becoming somewhat complicit, without becoming apologists (to some degree) for our policies, without a failure to pursue the truth and justice…

Therefore, it will inevitably devolve into more confusion among the American people about whether the Democratic Party really stands for anything, and whether they really offer a significant alternative to the GOP.

So, in conclusion, we have no choice but to pursue the impeachment, conviction, and removal from office of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. A failure to do so would be an abrogation of our duty. And if pursuing their removal presents risks of minimizing expected gains in the 2006 or 2008 elections, it also presents an opportunity for maximizing those gains. Ultimately, it is more important that we repudiate the extremes of the Bush administration than it is whether we gain the maximum possible political advantage from this crisis. Our country needs rescuing now, and history won’t care how many seats we won, but that we threw the government that legalized torture and launched a war of aggression on bogus intelligence out of power.