The biggest crisis facing the United States is in international relations and foreign policy. The only possible competitor is global warming, but that problem is so interrelated with our Middle East policy that it can properly subsumed within it. Many Americans are more concerned about access to health care, quality jobs, the quality of and access to education, the rights of women, gays, the disabled, or other domestic issues like lobbying and ethics reform. And they want the new Congress to focus on delivering tangible results on kitchen table issues. That’s understandble, but I want to show why it is a fool’s errand to ignore Iraq and impeachment in favor of a domestic policy agenda.
Markos put it like this:
We can spend 2007 either pushing impeachment (which isn’t as popular as Zogby claims, see Bowers’ piece), or we can use it educating the American people about what a Democratic government would look like — passing meaningful legislation that would improve their lives like the minimum wage, health care reform, ethics reform, stem cell research funding, policies that help families and the middle class.
Impeachment does none of that.
Let’s just get a little perspective on the financial situation. Dennis Kucinich recently made a point about the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan:
“Now, if Congress goes ahead under Democratic leadership and votes to approve what some are now estimating as an additional $160 billion for the war in Iraq, bringing the total for the fiscal year to $230 billion, the Democratic Congress will have bought George Bush’s war. Now, who would buy a used war from this administration?”
Okay, $230 billion dollars in this fiscal year. How does that compare to some domestic policies? Let’s take a look at education.
Title I Grants to Local Educational Agencies. Title I provides funds to schools in low-income communities and is the foundation for the NCLB accountability, school improvement, and parental choice reforms. The Budget requests $13.3 billion for Title I, a $603 million, or 4.7-percent increase over the 2005 level, and a 52-percent increase since 2001, to help schools implement the No Child Left Behind Act.
Reading First and Early Reading First. The Budget includes $1.1 billion for the President’s signature literacy programs to help students in preschool and elementary school improve their reading skills. Reading First supports high-quality, scientifically proven reading practices in grades K–3 to ensure that all children can read at grade level by third grade. The Budget proposes $1.0 billion, fulfilling the President’s commitment to provide $5 billion for reading over five years. The Budget includes $104 million for Early Reading First to develop model childhood literacy and pre-reading programs for schools serving high-poverty communities.
It should be clear what that $230 billion in Iraq is costing us here at home. It is 230 times as much money as we are spending on helping K-3 children learn to read in this country this year. Without the need to fund our foreign wars, we could double the budget for the Reading First and Early Reading First program and still have $229 billion left over to fund stem-cell research, expand access to health care, or just pay off some of our staggering national debt.
It’s not the case that we can avoid spending that $230 billion just by impeaching the President and Vice-President. But we have to consider two things. First, under Bush’s leadership we can expect to spend another $230 billion in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Second, that money is going to be entirely wasted, perhaps even worse than wasted, unless it is used in conjuction with a broader constructive and reality-based attempt to resolve regional disputes and bring stability.
There is a third problem, and I believe it is fatal to anyone that opposes impeachment. Bush and Cheney, even if they were to have an Oedipus moment, do not have the credibility to successfully carry out the diplomacy that is needed to extract ourselves from the quagmire of Iraq.
Given these considerations, impeachment becomes an imperative. The first fallacy is that we can detach impeachment from Iraq. No matter how you look at it, the strongest alternative, the most positive thing we could do to improve the situation in Iraq is to have a new foreign policy team that is not intimately tainted with the decision to invade Iraq or the policies that followed there.
The second fallacy is that we can do more for the American people by focusing on domestic issues than we can by removing the executive and ending our $230 billion annual commitment to Iraq. The cost savings of ending our commitment there are so huge that nothing else could conceivably help the American people more.
Let me go over some other fallacies.
Fallacy: Impeaching Bush will only give us a President Cheney.
It should not be controversial that any set of evidence that warranted the impeachment and conviction of George W. Bush would also justify the impeachment of Dick Cheney. In fact, the most promising avenues for investigation directly involve Dick Cheney: the 2001 energy task force and California energy crisis, the legal case for torture and the enemy combatant policy (Addington), the Valerie Plame case, the White House Iraq Group, Halliburton no-bid contracts, the NSA program, etc. If the facts justify impeaching Bush, they justify impeaching his quail-hunting sidekick too. And the Senate would be more willing to convict Cheney, not less.
Fallacy: there are no set of circumstances under which 18 Republican Senators would vote to convict the President.
Simply put, this is horse-hockey. Just to give one example…if the NSA is revealed to have spied on reporters, dissidents, the Kerry campaign, or other ordinary Americans (as I believe it did, or nearly a dozen NSA officers would not have leaked about it) then there is little doubt that 18 Republican Senators would vote to convict.
Moreover, the GOP is not running a candidate from the Bush administration in 2008. They have little incentive to protect them, and quite a lot of incentive to distance themselves from them.
Fallacy: what the polls say about impeachment are important.
In 1972, Nixon crushed McGovern.
Nixon 60.7%, 520 Electoral Votes
McGovern 37.5%, 17 Electoral Votes.
Less than two years later, Nixon had resigned to avoid impeachment. The investigations proved that Nixon had been lying. Do you think Bush has been lying? If the polls are important in this case, they are important because unlike Nixon, Reagan, or Clinton, Bush is starting out this process with job approval in the low 30’s. He cannot point to his approval ratings or an overwhelming re-election to argue that the people are on his side. Any major revelation would drive his number into the twenties or teens. In other words, the polls show us that Bush cannot sustain a major hit.
Fallacy: This one is expressed by Markos.
…the second we start impeachment proceedings, the media will focus on that. Heck WE’LL focus on that, and the Democratic legislative agenda will fade into the background, ignored. A perfect opportunity to brand the Democratic Party in a positive light will be forever squandered.
In one sense this is obviously correct. If the House Judiciary Committee begins impeachment proceedings the media will cover it and little else. The fallacy is that this is a good reason not to pursue impeachment. First, not to be too snarky, but it is nearly impossible to get the media to focus on our legislative agenda as it is. But, two other considerations render this argument useless. I raised one above (the enormous amount of money being wasted in a failed and hopeless Iraq policy does more damage to our legislative agenda than a lack of media coverage possibly could). Two, a weakened and desperate President is more likely to sign our popular legislation into law, not less.
Fallacy: It would be wrong to start investigations with the express purpose of impeaching the President and Vice-President.
This would be true if not for the foreign policy crisis that we find ourselves in. On the other hand, the investigations should be fair, not a witchhunt, and a not a crusade. If the facts emerge, fine. If they do not, then there should be no impeachment. How we ‘frame’ the investigations is up to people like Pelosi and Reid, not the netroots. Our job is not to deceive the public about our intentions. The intent is to get a new President before 2008.
Fallacy: there isn’t enough time to carry out these investigations.
Waxman and Conyers know exactly what they are looking for. The administration will run into two immediate problems. Turning over requested information will lead to impeachment and refusing to turn over requested information will lead to impeachment. Contempt of Congress and obstruction of justice are impeachable offenses that should be in full evidence by April.
Too many Democrats have been intimidated by so much time out of power. They are convinced that the media is 100% against us, the Republicans are in lockstep and will never defect, that the people can’t distinguish between lies about blowjobs and lies about spying on ordinary Americans. But the deepest defect in the Democratic netroots is in thinking domestic policies mean a damn until we can get rid of the President and Vice-President and fix our foreign policy. Iraq is so bad that even the wise men in Washington know Bush and Cheney needs to go. And you’ll be surprised how easily they cut them loose once the constitutional crisis (.pdf) comes to a head.
