Ten Reasons To Impeach the President -- And One Reason Why Democratic Lead

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Ten Reasons To Impeach the President -- And One Reason Why Democratic Leaders Are Wrong To Be Afraid To Do It

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Dave Lindorff

As prospects grow for a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even the Senate, this November, the idea of impeachment is gaining attention. Yet even as polls show increasing numbers of Americans supporting the idea of removing Bush from office before the end of his term, Democratic Party leaders keep backing away.

This is not simply bad politics. It is cowardly, wrong and dangerous.
There are those, like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who argue against impeachment, claiming that it would be a diversion from the "important agenda" of the Democratic Party. Aside from the fact that there is not much "there" in the so-called agenda of the so-called opposition, the reality is that the Democratic Party, should it manage to win a majority in House and Senate in November, will be unable to accomplish a single thing with President Bush in the White House, since the president has already claimed that he has the power to violate and ignore 750 acts and laws passed by a Congress led by his own party. Before the Democrats can count on a single bill of theirs becoming the law of the land, they will have to remove this usurper from office. Even ardent conservatives should be afraid of leaving stand actions that, if unchallenged, will set a precedent for all future presidents, Republican and Democrat, making American presidents into tyrants answerable to no one.

There are those who fear that impeaching Bush would mean turning over the White House to Vice President Dick Cheney. This is nonsense. The vice president has long been known to be the real president, and any constitutional crimes that are exposed in the course of impeachment hearings will quickly be traced also to Cheney's office. The vice president, however, does not have the president's Constitutional immunity from prosecution, and would likely be indicted and forced to resign long before Bush's impeachment got to a Senate trial. Nor would impeaching Bush mean turning the White House over to Rep. Dennis Hastert. Besides the fact that Hastert is reportedly facing his own legal troubles, impeachment is not even going to occur unless the Democrats take over the House in November first, and that would make the next person in line after Cheney none other than Democrat Pelosi.

There are people, especially in the media, who say impeachment is a bad idea both because it would allegedly cause a "constitutional crisis" and because it would lead to public anger at Democrats who promoted another divisive political battle. This is both unprincipled and absurd. First of all, impeachment is no constitutional crisis: the Founders thought it so important that they included impeachment of the president in the same Article II of the Constitution that defines the president's powers. If anything, we are facing a constitutional crisis right now. Impeachment is an integral part of the governing process. Secondly, polls suggest that a majority of Americans favor impeachment -- certainly more than ever favored impeachment of either Clinton or Nixon. People have had it with the sanctimoniousness, the dishonesty, the staggering incompetence and the nasty political dirty tricks of this administration. Third, they want an opposition that will stand on principle. But finally and most importantly, the crimes of this president and this administration are so grievous that it is shameful to even talk about practicalities and political advantage. The president simply must be impeached, because as the Willie Sutton of Constitutional violators, he is putting the Republic and the Constitution at grave risk. The only principled and valid discussion about strategy is about how best to achieve impeachment, not about whether to seek impeachment.


Dave Lindorff

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Dave Lindorff, a long-time Salon contributor, is co-author with Barbara
Olshansky, of The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing
President George W. Bush from Office, (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).