I just want to float this idea and am fully prepared to be shot down. It seems from the outside that it would be very unlikely for the current Congress to impeach Bush let alone convict him in the Senate. `While the Republicant incumbents might not want to use Bush's coattails in their election campaigns, neither would they want to risk the wrath of the neo-con machine if they were to openly oppose him. Any hope of ousting Bush would therefore seem to rely on the election of a Democrat dominated Congress in 2006. I would however think it would be a bad idea polically for the Democrats if they were successful in ousting Bush, whether by the Nixon route of resignation to avoid impeachment or by actually convicting him.
I base my view on the likely time scale. Any impeachment would take us to mid 2007 at the earliest. It is quite feasible by then that Cheney will have left office because of health problems that will require a prolonged attendance at Drs Kellog and Root's clinic. Removing Bush would leave a new Vice-President and possibly President in his place.
I would venture to suggest that the Democrats are currently riding high on an anti-Bush bandwagon. What however would happen if a new President were to be percieved as cleaning Bush's Augean stables of the left over corruption and were to have a honeymood period last through to the 2008 Presidential election? Remember that under the Constistution if that person were elected in 2008, they could also stand in 2012 with all of the advantages of incumbency and a cyclical improvement in the US economy. They would be seen to have "solved" the Iraq question by a spun evacuation of the country.
The superficially unattractive alternative is to keep a lame, if not dead, duck Bush in office until 2009. However in the long term is that so unattractive? As a Republican he will poison that party's prospects at the 2008 elections for the Congress. We could see a complete reversal of the current position of a Democratic President and both houses. A failure in Iraq could finally break the hold of the miliary/induatrial complex and convert Americans to the idea of EU style "soft" diplomacy. Democrats will have to oversee and direct the transition from the only global economic/military power to sharing the economic heights with the EU, India and China (plus possibly a greater Russia revitalised from oil and gas income)
China could possibly do to the US what the US did to the military power of the USSR. By concentrating on technological solutions, the US is going down a highly expensive route compared to China with its effectively low cost nuclear arsenal and large numbers available for service in theor army. Sheer numbers allied to a willingness to expend lives would counter the technology and "Dover" sensitive US forces. Mini nukes designed for tactica bunker busting are going to just be expensive baubles if the response is to be from the Chinese ICMBs. An alternativee scenario that I want to explore separately is a collapse of the Chinese economy that would leave the USA as the only power with a commitment to huge expenditure on defense in response to virtually no remaininng conventional threat but demonstrably unable to counter a guerilla war after a conventional victory. Into such a vacuum the Democrats could offer a real alternative to growing expenditure on arms and restore competitiveness by replacing that with a comprehensive health service and philosphy of aid and co-operation - learning to speak softly rather than wielding a big stick all the time.
Redirecting the economy in this way could lead to an economic resurgence - the US will never again achieve the ecomomiv supremacy it enjoyed in the 1980s and early 90s but could be a place where life for the ordinary American is not nasty, brutish and short. Keeping Bush could make the end of the US Empire a soft landing. Risking keeping the Republicans could make it a torrid time at home and a danger for those abroad.
