19th century German statesman Otto von Bismarck called politics "the art of the possible," by which he meant that government can't really occur without consensus. Given the badly divided state of the country and congress in particular, consensus has never been harder to achieve.
No one in recent memory has milked this divide better than Karl Rove and the Bush administration. By strategically collapsing resistance to the most divisive issues and bringing them to a public vote, he's managed to drag out what would otherwise be disenfranchised fringe-right voters in droves.
More after the jump...
(Remember fifty states' worth of gay marriage initiatives? Guess who was bussing voters to the polls to vote against them.)
I believe he may be tooling up to do it again, in the mid-term elections, by turning them into a referendum on impeaching Bush.
The word "impeachment" is popping up increasingly these days and not just off the lips of liberal activists spouting predictable bumper-sticker slogans.
After the unfounded claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and recent news of domestic spying without warrants, mainstream politicians and ordinary voters are talking openly about the possibility that President Bush could be impeached. So is at least one powerful senator, Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
So far, it's just talk. With Republicans controlling Congress, and memories still fresh of the bitter fight and national distraction inflamed by former President Clinton's 1998 impeachment, even the launching of an official inquiry is a very long shot.
But a poll released last week by Zogby International showed 52 percent of American adults thought Congress should consider impeaching Bush if he wiretapped U.S. citizens without court approval, including 59 percent of independents and 23 percent of Republicans. (The survey had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.)
Given those numbers, impeachment could become an issue in this fall's congressional elections, and dramatically raise the stakes. If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, a leading proponent of starting an official impeachment inquiry, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., would become chairman of the House committee that could pursue it.
Consider
these comments on a
recent Sam Rosenfeld article at Tapped (the American Prospect's blog) called "Chimpeachment."
Honestly, I'd like to hear a lot more about WHY this is a "spectacularly misguided" idea. If Bush really is vulnerable (and there's a reasonable argument to be made that he is on the domestic spying issue alone), then the possibility of impeachment exists.
Obviously, as you say, a vote would certainly run in his favor, but why wouldn't it benefit the Democrats to at least raise the specter of this? Going into November with the public mulling whether Bush is impeachable could only help drive home the Dems corruption message.
As far as I can see, the only trick would be to keep the election from becoming a referendum on impeachment, and instead channeling public nervousness into votes against GOP congressional candidates. "Well, there's no way we'd ever GET an impeachment, but he needs to be contained in some way. How about taking congress away from him?"
What am I missing?
Posted by Rob at January 25, 2006 03:43 PM
The best reason to impeach Bush is that he's committed an impeachable offense (or more). The second-best reason to impeach Bush is that it'll show we understand the principle of mutually-assured destruction far better than House "Sure, we'd like an ethics truce" Democrats currently do: if they impeach one of ours for spurious crap, we sure as hell better do what we can to impeach one of theirs when they do something seriously illegal and unconstitutional.
It's like announcing that being tough on terrorism requires letting Osama Bin Laden go free, but creating a national police force to pursue people who haven't done anything bad. And if that's an unflattering analogy to anyone, it's not my fault.
Posted by Chris at January 25, 2006 03:51 PM
First, I'm a Republican (but not politically active outside voting), so feel free to take anything I say with a grain of salt.
Second, I neither know nor care what the political ramifications of impeachment would be on either side.
What I care about is the rule of law. If this president, or any president, has intentionally and serially violated the Constitution and/or federal statutes, then impeachment and removal from office is the only thing standing between us and protodictatorship. Even the president of the United States shouldn't be able to just commit felony after felony and suffer no consequences.
As for any successor being just as distasteful to you from a political standpoint: Yes, but that successor also is likely to be a helluva lot more careful to follow the law, lest he/she suffer the same fate as the predecessor. The case against any successor who violated the law would be quite simple: "What part of NO didn't you understand?"
Posted by Lex at January 25, 2006 04:08 PM
Comparisons between the Clinton impeachment and a Bush impeachment should keep in mind the following items:
-Clinton was a popular president at the time, Bush is not.
-The public was opposed to impeaching Clinton because they did not feel that his misconduct warranted impeachment. Bush's misconduct is much more serious and does meet the standard of an impeachable offense.
-The media helped drive the Clinton impeachment and will work to block any impeachment of Bush. Sidestepping the traditional media filter will be the most significant challenge we face in bringing President Bush to justice.
Democrats should nationalize the 2006 election in a way that includes impeachment of the President for the lies that led us into Iraq and the assumptions of unlimited executive power. Democrats will need to bypass traditional media outlets to get their message out effectively.
Posted by Robin Ozretich at January 25, 2006 04:14 PM
Though Bush has made impeachable offenses, there is no way he will be impeached by a Republican Congress.
Instead of wasting so much time on the impeachment of Bush let's concentrate on electing Democrats to Congress this year. Maybe with a Democratic House we will be able to impeach Dubya.
Posted by Paul Siegel at January 25, 2006 05:06 PM
This issue has huge energy, and it's extremely chaotic; you can't rely on 100% partisan polarization to predict what might happen. While a majority of Americans are polling in favor of exploring impeachment, it's common wisdom that this congress simply doesn't have enough votes to actually follow through and indict Bush.
What does this do to the left's campaign messages going into 2006? If Dems push hard for an impeachment (which, arguably, they have justification to do right now), is there enough support in the public to beat back busloads of incensed wingnuts eager to protect "their preznit?" On the other hand, if there really is a sudden up-welling up grassroots support for accountability and the Dems don't pick up on it, what will the missed opportunity cost in terms of votes?
The cost of leaving Bush unchecked is high. Give him two more years to work and what will be left of privacy, the middle class, the economy, education, women's rights, the environment or the amity of our allies? If this were my problem to solve, the very first thing I'd be doing is very fine-grained polling all over the country on the question, "Do you believe there are sufficient reasons to begin impeachment proceedings against the president?" Democrats need a much better understanding of this issue before they start spending campaign money on public messaging. If Rove rolls the dice on impeachment to drag the hard-core back to the polls, will it backfire on him or not? Where is our upside on this issue?
[Cross-posted at Chaos Digest.]