I'm saddened to have to conclude that, following a good start in the 100 hours agenda, the Democratic Congress looks be failing due to a lack of political courage. The failure of our Democratic leadership is playing out along two intimately related axes: the Iraq war and impeachment of Bush and Cheney.
Our utter defeat on impeachment came as a self-inflicted wound when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid told the world that impeachment was "off the table". Their hope, perhaps, was to induce the GOP to play ball and advance significant policy gains which could be used to further extend a Democratic majority, and elect a Democratic President, in 2008. I might not go so far as to call such a hope naiveté or, worse, political appeasement, but it was certainly lying down with wolves while acting provocatively like a sheep.
The option of impeachment is a constitutional right of the Congress which must never be bargained away or taken "off the table," especially with a rogue Executive in office for another two years and having no future prospect of facing the electorate. Impeachment is the only remaining check upon this President, and arguably the only power he might be inclined to respect, given his penchant for ignoring Congress' laws and studiously avoiding rulings by our Judiciary. Perhaps impeachment can never truly be taken "off the table," present as it is six times in our Constitution, but it is hardly the ideal means to prepare the public for such a political event to imply that even considering impeachment is somehow illegitimate. Our leaders should instead be educating the public about the historical pedigree and proper purposes of impeachment, and contrasting the feckless impeachment of Clinton with the increasingly necessary one of W.
Many would counter this assertion with the seeming futility of impeachment when the Republicans command enough votes in the Senate to prevent a guilty verdict at trial in that body. While it is true that the Senate has become a much more partisan place, it also responds more to public opinion. More than half of American voters already support impeachment, even before hearings, articles are approved, and the trial moves forward. Almost 80% of Democrats support impeachment, more the half of Independents, and nearly 30% of Republicans support impeachment. I find it hard to see the political danger the Democratic leadership apparently sees in impeachment given that level of support in the grassroots. Indeed, I see danger for any Republican who fails to exercise independent judgment on the matter. I would also remind that only two of the nine Presidents who have had articles filed against him ever even made it to the Senate, and both failed there. Impeachment can remake the political landscape even if not voted out of the House, as in the case of Nixon.
But one of the most pragmatic arguments for impeachment is how it impacts the Democrats' approach to the Iraq war. Currently, we Democrats are eating our own trying to position ourselves in opposition to the war and to escalation without opening ourselves to charges of being against the troops or in league with the nation's enemies. We've seen Murtha's plan to kill the war by a policy of bureaucratic attrition crater for lack of support from both the left and right of our party after coming under whithering fire from the GOP; I don't think many other Democrats are going to see such a political debacle and step forward with a plan to openly oppose the President's escalation. The best we are now likely to see are plans to bring the war to close after Bush is safely out of office (like that of Senator Obama), when we (hopefully) have a Democratic President.
How then to stop the President's failed strategy in Iraq, and prevent him from launching a new war with Iran to double his bet in the region? Impeachment would freeze the political life of the country, put the Iraq war into virtual receivership, and halt any military misadventures by this Administration for the duration. Even if an impeachment did not force Bush and Cheney from office, it would make their political weakness manifest and halt the worst of their abuses.
Senator Leiberman is wringing his hands over the possibility of a "constitional crisis" that "threatens to consume our government." He thinks the only course is to back the President's plans no matter our concerns about their wisdom, or we might face a welter of "congressional interventions, presidential vetoes, and Supreme Court decisions." Since when did the vigorous working of our constitutional institutions qualify as a 'crisis'? I have to aver that anything Lieberman is against, I am seriously going to consider being for. Hell, what we need is a good crisis to put our system of checks and balances back into a reasonable equipoise following Bush's severe over-reaching. With Democrats too afraid, and too invested in the GOP's frame that denying funding for the war is a slap at the troops, to consider standing up to the President, impeachment may be the only means of opposing the war that is still politically viable.
The Democrats aren't totally without support on the idea that cutting funding would be political suicide (though I don't subscribe to this view). The latest AP polling is showing an odd disparity between support for cutting funding for the war and support for the war itself. 2/3rds of Americans disapprove of Bush's Iraq policy, while more than 1/2 trust Congress to handle the war and only 1/3rd trust Bush, so there is undoubted legitimacy for Congress to act on Iraq independent of the President. Likewise, 2/3rds of Americans oppose Bush's escalation of the war by sending in 21K additional troops, but at that same time an equal number of Americans oppose cutting funds for the war or for the surge. Why the disparity? Largely because the Democrats have abandoned the field and accepted the framing of the GOP that opposing further funding undermines the troops. If you aren't making an alternative case, he who frames the argument wins it. This gap between ends and means in the public's mind is the result of our Democratic leadership's failure to make a case that pulling the funding helps the troops by getting them home and will not endanger their safety. It may not be too late to make that case still, but impeachment might mean we could change the tone of the debate and put the Administration and the GOP on the defensive.
There are other themes which the GOP has been very successful in building to defend their position on Iraq against the new Democratic majority. One of the most powerful is the idea that we are indispensable in Iraq. Without us, goes the framing, Iraq will descend into chaos, becoming a failed state, and becoming a haven for unrest and terrorism worse than Afghanistan ever was and leading to ethic cleansing, if not genocide, to boot. Many Democrats have also internalized this framing and as a result are stuck regarding how to responsibly withdraw from Iraq.
Interestingly, however, those who know the most about conditions on the ground in Iraq - the Iraqi people - strongly disagree with the idea that their nation will descend into chaos without U.S. troops on the ground. In fact, they believe the exact opposite. 2/3rds of Iraqis believe that security for the average person will be enhanced by the departure of American troops. Similar percentages believe that violence, ethnic violence in particular, and the presence of foreign fighters will all be reduced by the departure of American troops. It isn't possible to say for certain what the future holds for Iraq, but I am inclined to listen to the Iraqis about the future of their society more than I am inclined to listen to think-tank windbags and Congress-critters who pontificate based on their extensive experience of the Green Zone.
Moreover, Iraqis think that the deep political and administrative problems that wrack Iraq would be improved by the departure of American forces. Three quarters of Iraqis see our presence as a disincentive for factions in Parliament to reach a political compromise that all parties can live with. 2/3rds actually think that reconstruction will proceed more smoothly without us, and that over-all crime will be reduced. Iraqis simply do not share our skepticism about their basic competence to run their own country. We really need to consider the assumptions behind our ready acceptance of the idea that Iraqis are incompetents unable to police their own nation. Such imperialist hubris doesn't sit well with the principles of the Democratic party, in my view.
But even more important than the immediate political consequence of reviving a stalled Democratic strategy to end the war in Iraq, impeachment is a inconvenient duty we owe to all future Americans. If politics were only about immediate advantage, clinging to and gaining power, our political system would be wretched and contemptible thing, indeed. But fortunately we do have a civic religion, a bedrock of fundamental political axioms, an American mos maiorum, if you will, forged in the crucible of our founding, embodied in our greatest leaders, and ingrained in the American character, which it is the responsibility of every generation to preserve and pass along. Parts of that tradition are undoubtedly the rule of law, the separation and limitation of government powers, and, most especially, a detestation of tyranny. Unless we Democrats stand on principle, even if it is momentarily unpopular to do so, we will give the future a precedent of unaccountable and over-weaning power that any future despot can fasten upon to justify oppressing the American people. We must not allow that. Even if it costs us an election, it will be a small price to pay for future generations not look back upon us with contempt from a future where being American means being less free than we are now.