There is a diary on the recommended list which lays out a logical path to
impeachment of President Bush.
This is an awful idea.
There are three reasons why pursing impeachment will not be good for the Democratic Party:
- Bush should not be our prime target any more.
- Impeachment plays right into Republican frames.
- We don't yet have the media sound machine to effectively make the case for impeachment.
Before exploring any of this, I want to note that I want impeachment. I think GWB has permanently damaged our nation. My daughter's future is compromised because of the self-serving choices made by GWB today. Bush has brought the nation to the verge of bankruptcy, our human rights record is starting to resemble Stalin's and the air I breathe is rich in toxins, the water I drink is filled with pathogens. Impeaching Bush is the beginning of what I want done to him; I'd like to see him tarred and feathered and run out of DC on a rail.
But impeachment gets us nowhere and here is why.
Bush is a lame duck president and his actions with regard to Katrina emphasize this. Efforts to impeach him make Bush, one single individual, responsible for the failures that occurred around Katrina. That would be a terrible mistake. As many others diaried (
here and
here), if Bush alone takes the blame, then conservatism as a governing philosophy gets off the hook. The response to Katrina was not a failure of one man and his poor choice of political appointees.
Katrina highlights the systemic failures of the entire conservative philosophy. From the
every man for himself brand of individualism to the
government small enough to drown in a bathtub, Katrina has functioned like the Great Depression in highlighting the need for a competent, effective government.
Blaming Bush also keeps the focus on him, rather than on the Republican philosophy as a whole. This needs to be woven into a seamless narrative:
You cannot trust Republicans
with your money (coingate/social security/Tom Delay)
with your national security (Osama still at large, Katrina preparations)
with your life (our soldiers in harms way without proper equipment, Katrina response)
This narrative can then be used against Republicans at every level. If the focus is on Bush alone, then all Republicans need to do is repudiate Bush and they walk away from a potential train wreck. I can see Republican incumbents running for congress expressing their disappointment with the President and pledging it will be different under them.
Impeachment also plays directly into the blame game meme that Republicans are busy spreading. Note: the blame game is a Republican frame designed to make Democratic efforts to demand accountability look like obstruction to recovery from the hurricane. That would allow Republicans to run on a platform of being "problem solvers" unlike the whiny Democrats who can only stand around pointing the finger. This does not mean we abandon attempts to hold people accountable; we simply must do it in the context of making the nation safer for the future. Democratic focus must be on solutions that present our frames to the public: good government protects our national security.
Finally, just imagine what the Right Wing Corporate Media (RWCM) will do with attempts at impeachment. As Rena in SF correctly points out, we have the best reasons for wanting to impeach a president since the founding of the nation. There are valid reasons to impeach. But with our current media, nobody would ever hear those reasons. All the RWCM would do is repeat the Republican blame game frame, over and over and over. Our sound machine is too small to carry our message effectively.
So where do we focus our energy, if not impeachment? Kid Oakland had a great set of suggestions in his diary flipping the rock. Don't expect that we will win the message war today. But right now there is fertile ground out there for us to plant the seeds of our message so that Democratic candidates in 2006 and 2008 can start to use a frames the public already recognizes and responds to:
- You cannot trust Republicans with your money, your security or even your life. They will not be there for you. Conservatism is toxic to the public good.
- Democrats will be there for you with responsible, effective government to protect your money, your security and your life.
Others will need to boil the above down to sound bites, but these seeds have been planted and rather than spend our energy trying to hack down a dying tree, we need to be nurturing, watering and fertilizing these seeds of our message.
Besides that, do you really think Dick Cheney would be better?