Surprising Support for Impeachment

Via Brad DeLong, talent show Greg reads a Newskeek poll indicating that 51 percent of the public would like to see George W. Bush impeached, whereas just 44 percent is opposed. Or, as Newsweek puts it, "Other parts of a potential Democratic agenda receive less support, especially calls to impeach Bush: 47 percent of Democrats say that should be a 'top priority,' but only 28 percent of all Americans say it should be, 23 percent say it should be a lower priority and nearly half nearly half, 44 percent, say it should not be done."

Impeachment -- a process which, if leading to conviction, would result in Dick Cheney becoming president of the United States -- lacks a great deal of appeal to me as an agenda item.

Comments

Can the VP not be impeached as well? Especially if it can be shown that he was instrumental in policy development and deployment? Or can we just criminally convict the bastard on something else?

Then the POTUS goes to the Speaker--that'd be Pelosi (one hopes), so I'm okay with that.

Posted by Terraformer | October 23, 2006 9:30 AM

Both Bushes chose their VP's well. The prospect of an official Cheney presidency makes the Avignon Weasel impeachment proof. But if Murtha becomes Speaker, impeaching and removing both of the smirking gangsters in a single indictment would be an attractive political act.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 23, 2006 9:38 AM

I wonder if Cheney would be less dangerous as the actual President than he is as the president-in-hiding. As prsident, at least his actions would be visible. As it is now, he has all the power of the president and none of the visibility.

Posted by Jack Lindahl | October 23, 2006 9:43 AM

Can't we get Cheney indicted or imprisoned or something then impeach?

Posted by crack | October 23, 2006 9:49 AM

Until we have 66 senators willing to convict the president of high crimes and misdemeanors, talk of impeachment is silly. Drag up dirt through the subpoena process, sure. But impeachment is a road to nowhere.

Posted by Christmas | October 23, 2006 9:55 AM

I fucking hate them, too, but impeachment is a bad idea.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | October 23, 2006 10:00 AM

Impeachment is too good for him. He should be subjected to a punishment far more excruciating and humiliating: serving out the remainder of his term.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 23, 2006 10:10 AM

We didn't actually have to impeach Nixon and Agnew to get a new president back in 1974. If we make serious enough threats, some Republican bigwig will probably take them aside and tell them it would be better off for the party for them to just resign and elevate a successor of their choosing. Whether they are the sort of people who are capable of listening to such advice is another question.

Posted by Greg | October 23, 2006 10:11 AM

First, I think if you could impeach Bush, you could easily impeach Cheney.

Second, I think impeachment is a good idea in that it would go a long ways towards restoring LEGITIMACY. As Bush said around the time of Abu Ghraib (paraphrasing) "yeah we do some bad things, but we're a nation of laws where those who violate them are held accountable." If we held Bush and Cheney accountable, it would help to restore our legitimacy around the world.

Posted by Nordy | October 23, 2006 10:11 AM

OK - not that we should impeach him, but the fact that 51% of the public supports the idea is undoubtedly a good sign. Is this getting as much play as one would expect if he was say, a Democrat?

Posted by MDtoMN | October 23, 2006 10:14 AM

Impeached for what, specifically?

An option far less damaging (to the country) and also much more effective (in terms of providing a clean break, so that the U.S. can resume its moral leadership) would be for Bush and Cheney to resign.

Posted by Johnny A. | October 23, 2006 10:17 AM

Cheney is obviously the eminence gris already. Much better to flush him out of the shadows. Ten gets you one that he would retire "due to health problems" in that event.

As unpleasant as it may be, it's time for Congress to start governing the nation. 50 years of having the President do it has not been a success.

Posted by serial catowner | October 23, 2006 10:18 AM

The plan shouldn't be to impeach Bush or his puppet-masters, but, via aggressive oversight, to expose the affairs of the last 6 years to the light of day, and let subsequent events take their course. That's the really good news here: if 51% don't have a problem with impeaching Bush, a far larger number won't object to robustly investigating the Bush administration.

Posted by kth | October 23, 2006 10:38 AM

51% is a really good figure for impeachment considering that there have been no official investigations of any of his horrors. The Republicans never managed anything near that, after 7 years of fluoroscoping every cell of Bill Clinton.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 23, 2006 10:47 AM

Let's clear this up: Article II, sec. 4 of the Constitution explicitly states that the VP can be impeached, just like the P, for high crimes and misdemeanors. There's no legal reason you couldn't try a two-fer.

For what it's worth, though, I think impeachment is a bad idea politically, just because it'd be a lengthy, bitter distraction from actual governing, and Bush & Cheney only have a couple of years left in the White House in any event.

Posted by Pat | October 23, 2006 10:51 AM

Newskeek?

Posted by BruceR | October 23, 2006 10:53 AM

We need some rules:
1) Cheney First
2) Not before the New Speaker of the House is installed, whoever she may be.

Posted by marc sobel | October 23, 2006 12:48 PM

If Cheney is impeached first then he most likely would resign and allow Bush to appoint a new VP, as Nixon did with Ford when Agnew resigned-- though whether Bush would appoint a decent fellow like Ford or an even worse henchman is hard to say.

Posted by JonF | October 23, 2006 1:02 PM

seems like a bad idea. even if the dems could pull it off, and i doubt they could get past the senate, you wouldn't get rid of bush and cheney until far too late in the term for it to be worth it, and impeachment seems like a very good way to rally the republican base for 2008, turn off many moderates, etc.

Posted by dj superflat | October 23, 2006 1:05 PM

It seems necessary to the integrity of the Constitutional order to at least do something in terms of impeaching or censuring Bush and Cheney. Censure might be a good option, and I believe Russ Feingold has already introduced a motion of censure. But some kind of public recognition -- a kind of Willie Brandt in Poland moment -- that this Administration is guilty of grievous crimes is necessary. Both for our nature as a republic and for our standing abroad.

Posted by Ben Cronin | October 23, 2006 1:10 PM

Even if Cheney was going to be president, I'd still favor impeachment. Hopefully the knowledge that his head was up on the block would check some of his anti-social impulses. Presidents need to realize that they're employees who can and will be terminated when they screw up.
Terminated meaning fired of course, I don't want my name on some Secret Service watchlist.

Posted by Travis | October 23, 2006 1:18 PM

When it comes to drawing up the bill of particulars, Cheney was complicit in just about everything. It wouldn't be logical to impeach Bush and not impeach Cheney with him.

Conviction is out of the question barring some shocking revelation. But impeachment at least makes a gesture toward accountability. I think it's the right thing for the country, even if it isn't politically good for the Democrats.

Maybe it's time for the Democrats to do what's right for the country, without worrying about whether it's politically smart. Maybe that will turn out to be politically smart in the long run. It's not like doing the opposite has worked out so well for the Democrats.

Posted by David Tomlin | October 23, 2006 1:25 PM

If we don't impeach W., what't the point of having such a thing as impeachment? If we don't impeach Bush, we may as well stop taking ourselves seriously. Also, there's no reason to not go after Cheney (and Gonzales) too. But even if it were only Bush and Cheney became president, it ought to be done.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 23, 2006 1:29 PM

If we don't impeach Bush, we may as well stop taking ourselves seriously.

By 'us', I mean 'Americans', not Democrats.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 23, 2006 1:31 PM

"Impeachment -- a process which, if leading to conviction, would result in Dick Cheney becoming president of the United States -- "

Wait a minute.

Dick Cheney is already the president. If he officially becomes the president then at least he will be subject to more scrutiny. And if Dems are in control of Congress they will make sure there is scrutiny.

Posted by Nan | October 23, 2006 2:22 PM

"For what it's worth, though, I think impeachment is a bad idea politically, just because it'd be a lengthy, bitter distraction from actual governing, and Bush & Cheney only have a couple of years left in the White House in any event."

This is the problem with liberals. They have a narrow vision. They are too timid.

In 1998 there were only 2 years left in Clinton's term. And if Clinton had been removed Gore would have become president. The public opinion polls were overwhelmingly against impeachment. It was a distraction from governing. So technically it was a bad idea politically. But all these considerations did not stop the GOP from going ahead with it. And they have paid no political price for it. You could argue that it helped them politically. They control all 3 branches of govt.

Posted by Nan | October 23, 2006 2:28 PM

Nan:

You say timid, I say realistic.

Clinton's misbehavior helped the Republicans, no doubt about it. But the impeachment of Clinton made the Republicans look petty. I think they managed to hang on to their majority in the House and gained the Senate and White House in spite of the impeachment, not because of it.

In any event, from my perspective, the Clinton impeachment was a bad idea for the same reasons a Bush impeachment would be. The process is incredibly disruptive, time- and resource-consuming, and divisive. This country has serious problems that need immediate grown-up attention: corruption in Congress, the Iraq debacle, etc. I figure an impeachment proceeding this time around would require at least a year, maybe even two, given all the yet-to-be-done investigating into the NSA warrantless surveillance program (the only realistic grounds for impeachment of which I can think, although there might be others). Given all the privilege and classification issues, I can see plenty of opportunity for the Administration to drag it out for a very long time.

But let's take a look at the rosiest outcome, from your perspective. Let's say the House votes in a timely manner to impeach Bush and Cheney. Then we go to the Senate, which would have to vote to convict by a two-thirds majority--which will simply not happen, no matter how many Senate seats Dems pick up next month.

Let's pretend, though, that the Senate somehow votes to convict. Bush and Cheney are out. Then Nancy Pelosi (or whoever is House Speaker at the time) becomes President, without ever having even run for the office.

Haven't Democrats been complaining about Bush's lack of a mandate for six years now? So to fix that, we're going to impeach him just to install somebody no-one outside of his or her district has even had a chance to vote for? Yuck.

Oversee, investigate, censure? Fine by me.

Impeach? No, thanks.

Posted by Pat | October 23, 2006 3:38 PM

If Bush (at least) isn't impeached, his plainly extra-constitutional/unconstitutional behavior will have been legitimized. That worries me a lot more than who else is president for the next two years.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 23, 2006 4:34 PM

the Clinton impeachment was a bad idea for the same reasons a Bush impeachment would be.

Because Clinton had a six year record of attempting, quite sincerely, to subvert the Constitution? Because Bush got a blowjob?

WTF? The Framers didn't include impeachment with some sort of invisible ink "(not really)". If Bush has really done the things we liberals think he has - with the signing statements, the torture, the domestic spying - then we have a Constitutional obligation to impeach him. Full stop. Is it the best use of Congressional time WRT passing a progressive agenda? Will it benefit Democratic chances in '08? Will it make David Brooks talk about how great Democrats are? Probably not, on all three counts.

But Jesus, people, the man treats the Constitution as toiler paper. If he gets away with it - if the Presidency changes hands in '08 with all these precedents intact, and with all the bad actors, from Bush to Rove to Gonzalez to Abram to Feith, with reputations intact - then we have failed our duty as citizens to protect government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Are you fucking men or mice? It's a Republic - can you keep it? Does she stand as she stood, rock-ribbed and copper-sheathed? Or do we bequeath a tattered legacy to our decendents, the first generation in American history willing to knowingly turn a blind eye to encroaching autocracy?

Posted by JRoth | October 23, 2006 10:30 PM

One caveat: I'm not in favor of impeachment-for-impeachment's-sake. Because I don't want it to be political/personal payback the way the Clinton impeachment was, I would only want it if careful investigation - and subpoenas - by Dem Committee chairs led to a strong case. It would be a stupid move in the First 100 Hours. But it belongs on the table, and I think that, if we win, it should be casually dropped into cable chat conversation by pundits and elected Dems alike - "If the President is shown to have violated his oath to uphold the Constitution, I don't see what choice we have. Believe me, we'd rather fix the health care disaster the Reps have ignored for 6 years, but we have a duty...." As the above poll shows, this is not out of the question for the American people, and, for all practical purposes, they've never seen a single public figure advocate for it. Think about that.

Most important, the "practical" thinking advacated above is what led the Iran-Contra villains to walk, and some of them, sickeningly, to return to power. Dems have tried forgive-and-forget before. Didn't work.

Posted by JRoth | October 23, 2006 10:46 PM

The Practicalities

Of course Cheney should be impeached first, or on the same bill of fare as his ventriloquist's dummy. I can't imagine any particulars that Bush might reasonably be impeached for that Cheney is not also guilty of. If Cheney goes first, the President's choice to replace him should be given zero deference by the Congress, which would have to approve him by a majority in both chambers. Such a nominee should be judged solely on his fitness to assume the Presidency when Bush is convicted by the Senate. A willingness to see that the laws be faithfully executed should be the sine qua non of acceptability. I don't see Bush naming, essentially to be his successor, anyone who could not be trusted to make sure that the laws that Bushco have broken remain unenforced.

An impeachment that led to successful conviction would put the next Speaker, a Democrat, into the Presidency. This inexorable end-point is the fundamental reason there is so little enthusiasm for the idea of beginning the process. Yet, willing or not, the Dems will soon realize that impeachment, uncomfortable as it will be, will be the only way of dealing with Bushco in a post-Dem victory environment. I don't see how Bush can abandon the permanent campaign, in which the opposition is branded as opposed to the essential interests of this country, that has been his sole and only way of dealing with the Dems, precisely when the Dems acquire the power to become a real "threat" to that national security. How does he tone down the rhetoric precisely when the Defeatocrats' positions aren't just theoretically bad and dangerous -- rhetorically useful to keep people in fear of the awful consequences of their returning to power, but not really something that is an immediate threat -- but actually threaten to become law of the land next Tuesday? If we win this election, and get majorities, it will be precisely because we have finally learned to stop responding to being called traitors by going into a defensive crouch, agreeing with our assailants, and hoping they will tire of beating us soon. Once having gained the majority by finally standing up for ourselves, why would we suddenly revert to the defensive crouch? If the President is to go on saying that to oppose his torture and secret prison programs is to endanger America, what other response will we have but to hold the impeachment hearings and trial that will demonstrate that torture and these illegal prisons haven't worked to make us safer, but have simply created a gulag that is doing about as much to protect America as the Soviet gulag did to protect the late and unlamented Soviet Union.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | October 23, 2006 11:55 PM

I understand the impulse to go full-bore on the offensive. And I agree that Bush & Cheney are Very Bad Men who've done Very Bad Things. Which is why I'd love to see the return of oversight, investigations, even a censure resolution.

I think we'll just have to disagree over whether impeachment is a net good idea or not.

But is it even a realistic option?

A conviction on impeachment requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. No matter how well Dems do in the election next month, they can't reasonably be expected to get more than a slim majority of seats in the Senate. Two-thirds? 67 yea votes to impeach Bush and Cheney? No. Way.

Even if we assume that a couple of Republicans defect on a conviction vote, and that no Democrats do, the numbers just arent there.

But let's shift the burden here. Proponents of impeachment: Please explain how the impeachment procedure would result in a conviction in the Senate, taking into account the political math. If it won't, but you'd still like the House to vote to impeach anyways, please explain why. Also, please explain why a procedurally futile vote for impeachment in the House is preferable to, say, a joint resolution of censure passed by majority votes in both the House and Senate.

You have the last word. I've commented way too much here.

Posted by Pat | October 24, 2006 7:18 AM

Can you really assume that conviction is impossible? Republicans may have been impervious to the will of the electorate as a whole in '98, but will they be after the pending election? How do we know conviction iis impossible before the investigation has been done? We don't. It's possible that the public will be fairly clamoring for Bush's impeachment, for all we know.

But ultimately, you do it because it's the riight thing to do. If Dems want to have a real majority again, they must lead instead of react. I would be fine with Franken's idea of impeaching him later (llike in the last month or something). But if the Constitution means anything, if the power of impeachment is there for a reason, you impeach and try to covict as a matter of principle. It really is beyond calculation.

That said, there's no reason to be politically oafish about it. LEAD. It's compl;etely possible that the CW that 'impeachment is disruptive and unpopular because the Clinton one was unpopular' is exactly backwards. Maybe a *warranted* impeachment is exactly what the country needs and would want, precisely because the last one wasn't warranted.

If you haven't read it already, Kaygro X is the point-person for this argument, and argues much better than I. Read his series herehere. First part here. I find it utterly convincing.

Posted by jonnybutter | October 24, 2006 8:15 AM

If Bush is impeached and not convicted, he will go into the history books as one of only three presidents to be so honored, and of the three the one who most deserved it. This is a much stronger sanction than a censure resolution.

Also, even if conviction fails of the required supermajority, a majority vote for conviction is another mark in the history books. Ironically, there's a parallel in the matter of the administration's failed attempt to get a Security Council resolution authorizing the invasion of Iraq. Even after it was clear that France and Russia were going to veto, they still planned to put it to vote until it was clear there wouldn't even be a majority.

Jonnybutter put his finger on it. The Bush/Cheney policies must be delegitimized, and nothing short of impeachment will really do it.

Giving Pelosi six months in the Whitehouse isn't what it's about.

Posted by David Tomlin | October 24, 2006 8:53 AM

Can you really assume that conviction is impossible?

True. Republicans resisted Nixon/Watergate until the tapes emerged. Bush and Cheney haven't even been served a single subpoena. Physical evidence has a way of turning heads.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 24, 2006 9:25 AM

I don't think it would be quite so bad to have Cheney as president. A stupid man is capable of things a smart man isn't. Bush's totalitarian tendencies come partly because he isn't smart enough to realize how this can backfire on him. Cheney is smart enough to show restraint, especially if we demonstrate the consequences of stepping out of line like this.

Posted by Zzedar | October 24, 2006 10:14 AM

No Republican Senators would vote to convict. There's no way we can make it worthwhile politically for them. Even if 70% of the country favored removal from office, the other 30% would be die-hard Republican base voters who would never forgive a Republican Senator for voting against Dear Leader. It would be betrayal of the highest order. Republicans need these people to get elected; they're the GOTV volunteers, donors, etc. Any Republican who voted to convict would be signing his or her political (and maybe even actual, given how crazy the base is) death warrant.

The same, however, could be said of a vote to not to convict. You don't get to piss off 70% of the electorate without consequences. So it's a lose-lose for Republican Senators. And that doesn't even take into account the presidential candidates, who regardless of whether they're in the Senate will be asked for their opinion and face the same two choices. Someone in the White House would undoubtedly be aware of this dynamic, and pressure Bush and Cheney to resign, maybe as part of a Ford Manuever, in order to keep Republicans in Congress from facing this choice. But the X-factor here is that Bush is so narcissistic and stubborn that he wouldn't want to go anywhere unless he absolutely had to, and possibly not even then. Cheney, too, is a veteran of the whole Nixon fiasco, and despises more than anything any check on executive power. I would be surprised if these guys left office without being forced out.

Still, I think impeachment would be a good idea. It would put a stamp of illegitimacy on everything Bush has done and stain his legacy and damage the Republican party for years, possibly decades, to come, even if it didn't remove him from office. And in the short term, just putting the question before the Senate (provided we do our persuasive legwork in the court of public opinion) would make a dynamite wedge issue for the '08 elections. Plus there is a small chance we could get both Cheney and Bush removed from office.

Posted by Greg | October 24, 2006 11:13 AM

Competing Trials

The Republicans' permanent campaign this past five years has consisted of little else but keeping Dems on trial in the court of public opinion as traitors, Defeatocrats, cut-and-run types who want to end interrogation of dangerous terrorists. They have had the bully pulpit of the Presidency, control of all branches of the federal govt, and a full-throated full-spectrum noise machine in the media from which to conduct the prosecution. Losing one or both chambers of the legislature will not, cannot, end this ongoing prosecution of Dems as traitors. If they cool the rhetoric in order to get along with the Dems now controlling the legislature, they will be admitting that this rhetoric that has kept us in this otherwise pointless war had as its sole aim keeping the Republicans in power, who cares how many soldiers, Marines and Iraqis it got killed. Accommodation would deprive them of their most potent, really their only, weapon, just when they most need defenses, when Dems control the legislature and most need to be thwarted, when Dems, no matter how reluctant to investigate and oversee, will have all sorts of Republican targets dropped into Dem laps no matter how unwilling we are to go on the attack.

The Dems will have no choice but to counter-attack, or tacitly admit, by lack of defense, that yes, we are traitors. We will lack the bully pulpit, we will lack the noise machine. No matter how much Dems initially try to avoid impeachment, for all the sensible reasons outlined above by many sensible contributors to this thread, it will happen because it will prove the hands-down best means of staging a counter-trial of the Republicans. We don't even have to count on fresh damning revelations (though these, and some of them probably bad enough to get enough Republican Senators to vote to convict, are nearly certain to drop) beyond what is already known in scattered reports form the media, is plenty enough, drawn together in hearings and then the Senate trial itself, to win our case.

Habeas corpus, though but one example among many, is probalby the clearest issue with which to illustrate the point. The administration attack machine will continue to portray any Dem pressure for a more reasonable policy in Iraq or against Islamic radicals as falling into a pattern of Dem softness on terror, as evidenced by our less than full-throated support for detaining without legal process and torturing anyone the administration might think of as a terrorist. No matter how accommodating we try to be to torture, we will never get to the right of them on this issue (even if we sold our souls and wanted to do this), and we will never split off so-called Republican moderates on this issue. The recent dance of McCain/Graham/Warner on ths issue should be evidence enough of that. In the higher threat environment after Dems gain a chamber or two, the Reps will find it even more necessary to all hang together, lest they hang separately. Unless we wish to meekly allow ourselves to be convicted of a criminal softness on terror that needlessly endangers American lives just to give Miranda rights to dangerosu terrorists, we will have no recourse but to lay out the case that every part of this characterization is false. Impeachment, the hearings and trial, will be the only way to get that done. Enough people will be paying enough attention to allow the case to be made. And the case is out there. This recent MSNBC series on torture at Guantanamo alone, in which serious law enforcement professionals have already come forward (Lord knows how many more will come forward after the investigations begin) to tell how they warned, right from the start, that torture simply doesn't work, that it is instead characteristic of corrupt and incompetent regimes like the former Soviet Union, would be replayed with these law enforcement types testifying before Congress. We already know of cases (Arar, many of the Guantanamo detainees) in which these extreme and illegal means have been applied to the people against there was not even half-way reasoanble suspicion. They, and the many more brought out of the woodwork by the impeachment process, will testify in a forum that will finally allow their Kafkaesque ordeals to be made real to the average American. We already know of at least one practical example (Jose Padilla) that makes the case that, under torture, its victims will agree to any cock-and-bull story presented to them by their tormenters as the means to make the pain stop. The administration will be challenged, and will be unable to bring forth even one example of a case in which this abuse has protected the national security. If they had the goods on these people, they already would have put them on trial, rather than have to rely on show-trial prosecutions of nutjobs like those chuckleheads in Miami that they have to entrap into comic opera plots against the United States.

Republican loss of Congress is just going to make the political atmosphere that much more Hobbesian. Not fighting back will not be a realistic option. Let's just hope that impeachment of the President is the most extreme thing we have to do to fight back in the next two years.

Posted by Glen Tomkins | October 24, 2006 11:16 AM

Investigate, investigate, investigate.

And with all the crap that will start to surface, two things will happen:
- The Dems won't have a choice but impeach so not to look like patsies.
- Many Repug senators won't have a choice but convict so to save their own hide.

But first, take over Congress

Posted by Fifi | October 24, 2006 1:15 PM

I'm hoping (without any factual basis) that when Pelosi "rules out impeachment", she does so with the unspoken caveat, "based on what we know now". However, even though I yearn for a GOP Congressional rout, I fully expect that the Dems will betray me once again, and the first way they'll do it will by taking the usual spineless, poll-tested, brain-dead, "moderate" approach to impeachment.

Nordy captures one of the central reasons why Bush and Cheney need to go on trial -- we need a dramatic, OFFICIAL rejection of all the wreckage they've caused. There's a more forward-looking one as well: We need to establish precedents that sharply discourage any future administrations from aping the criminality and incompetence of this one.

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