There have been times when I felt quite lonely within the progressive blogosphere in my calls for impeachment, but that has decidedly changed with the commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison term. Fewer and fewer bloggers are willing to dispute the urgent need to remove Bush and Cheney from office. But there is still a problem.
Just because we impeach Bush and Cheney doesn’t mean that we will succeed in removing them from office. We could make the same argument for Bush and Cheney that the Republicans made for Bill Clinton: impeaching them will leave a mark on their records and dissuade future administrations from thinking they can flout the rule of law. I didn’t think much of that argument when the Republicans made it about lies told in a meritless sexual harassment case. It makes a lot more sense when applied to the Bush administration.
Nonetheless, it pays to answer the question, ‘Do you support putting maximum pressure on the Democrats to impeach even if it is unlikely to result in removal?’
To my mind, we should try to set that question aside for the moment and consider a different question. ‘On what basis would we be most likely to get the support of a significant minority of congressional Republicans?’
If it is at all possible to actually succeed in removing Bush and Cheney, we should pursue that path. And it is quite clear that the Republicans are not willing to convict Bush or Cheney for anything they have already done (at least, anything that is publicly known). We will not succeed merely by making a better case about torture, or warrantless wiretaps, or signing statements, or politicization of the Justice Dept., or voter fraud, or Katrina.
To convince Republicans we have to do something different. The answer, I believe, is to force Bush and Cheney to come into a direct constitutional confrontation with Congress. If Congress feels their powers are being subsumed under the Executive Branch they will stand up and exert their rights. We saw this when the administration snuck a provision into the Patriot Act that eliminated the Senate’s advise and consent role in confirming US Attorneys. Congress swiftly restored that power to themselves.
The first step is for Senator Leahy and Rep. Conyers to take the administration to court and find them in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas. It will then be up to Alberto Gonzales to enforce the law. He probably won’t. At that point, Conyers should open up impeachment hearings based on the usurpation of congressional power by the Executive. This would include not only a failure to comply with subpoenas, but a failure to enforce the law, an examination of signing statements, failure to comply with classification oversight and standards, and other aspects of the Unitary Executive theory.
The advantage of this strategy is that it places supportive Republicans in the position of dealing away their own prerogatives.
Meanwhile, once this campaign is underway, the blogospheric noise machine will focus on the failings of the administration that lead less than 30% of the public to support them. Even though the vast majority of these failings will not be part of the articles of impeachment, they will remind people how much they hate Bush and Cheney and lead them to support the effort to remove them.
This is the strategy I recommend.
