The Case Against Impeachment

Is made by Michael Tomasky and focuses on the pragmatic case that it's "the dumbest move the Dems could make." And certainly I'm sympathetic to that political judgment. Were I Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or someone else charged with winning elections, this seems like a risk that mostly features downside. But as a journalist, or a pundit it seems odd to primarily focus on this point.

That the votes aren't there is a completely sound point. But on the other hand, it's uncontroversial to say the Democrats need to do oversight, need to bring things to light. Why shouldn't Democrats maintain as a goal that if such oversight reveals further evidence of crimes to convince the opposition and the public of that fact? It's all fairly hypothetical, yes, but it seems curious to prejudge the outcome of an investigations into an unpopular and seemingly criminal administration in its favor merely because pointing out the constitutional implications of its criminality would be politicaly inconvenient.

Comments

"Were I Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi or someone else charged with winning elections, this seems like a risk that mostly features downside. But as a journalist, or a pundit it seems odd to primarily focus on this point."

Say whaaaaaaat?

A smart pundit like Tomasky understands that the electoral success of Democrats matters to a whole lot more folks than just Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

A smart pundit like Tomasky understands that the electoral success of Democrats underpins all the progressives ideas he'd like to see the country be able to enact.

Why aren't you a smart pundit too?

Posted by Petey | August 6, 2007 9:35 AM

You might also add that a pundit should perhaps focus on whether or not impeachment is justified rather than the usual horse race nonsense. At the very least, if pundits come to believe impeachment is justified, it has a direct effect on how impeachment proceedings are perceived, and so changes the race.

I get very fed up with "the Dems should do this because of how people-other-than-me will react" argument (Tomasky's, obviously, not Matt's). Persuade the other people to be more like you!

Posted by william | August 6, 2007 9:36 AM

it seems curious to prejudge the outcome of an investigations into an unpopular and seemingly criminal administration in its favor merely because pointing out the constitutional implications of its criminality would be politicaly inconvenient.

Yes, 'curious' - to put it mildly. Also odd that Tomasky needs to open his article with the Cindy Sheehan straw-woman, just like Mitt Romney would. I'd say 'bizarre'.

Posted by jonnybutter | August 6, 2007 9:39 AM

Yes, indeed. There are two issues: impeachment as a focus for popular mobilization; and impeachment as a step to be taken by the Congress. The paradox is that all the "politically feasible" investigations-short-of-impeachment things Tomasky wants will be easier to achieve if we keep impeachment alive in the first sense. Like the health-care debate of the 90s--there was no mobilization for single-payer, so the "feasible" middling option got killed.

Posted by Jim M | August 6, 2007 9:40 AM

While I'm skeptical that the politics of impeachment are good for the Democrats - pace Atrios, I think most things are good for the Democrats right now, but not everything - I don't really like all these, "be reasonable now, don't go crazy and impeach" statements.

I think the best thing for the Democrats is a significant, respectable chunk of the country supporting impeachment of Bush and Cheney. That needs to be the leftist view so that Congress can take hte "moderate" path of merely impeaching Gonzalez.

I see in some of the anti-impeachment writing the same counterproductive fear of the puppet-carrying dirty hippies, and the same counterproductive desire to establish oneself as a serious thinker.

I still have not been convinced that the impeachment brigades are right, but I like having them over there on my left, and I'm not particularly interested in having a big public debate with them.

Posted by DivGuy | August 6, 2007 9:40 AM

Since I'm neither a pundit nor very smart I should probably not say anything about this, but if I were a Democratic strategist I'd consider impeaching Cheney but not Bush. Most Americans now think Bush is sort of like a big goofy dog who's just too stupid to understand he's not supposed to pee on the rug. Cheney, by contrast, is a villain straight from central casting.

Posted by The Next to Last Pope | August 6, 2007 9:41 AM

You mean, a mainstream media outlet published an article urging Democrats to back down and give Republicans a free pass? Laws! What a shock!

One of the amazing things about the media's role in the Lewinsky scandal was the disconnnect between them and the public: 70 percent of the public approved of Clinton and opposed impeachment, yet you rarely heard that view on your Teevee. And nowadays, when 40 percent of the public wants these bastards to be impeached, you rarely hear that view.

Hmmm . . . I wonder why that is.

Posted by pdp | August 6, 2007 9:53 AM

I don't like it because it means that only in an alternate universe will this administration be called to task for its crimes. Also, it seems to me that a large number of people don't really understand the extent to which George W. Bush has flouted the law and overstepped his authority. A lot of people (even some who don't support him) assume that all this talk about his criminality is motivated by the bias of partisan interest, and that he hasn't done anything that bad. If there actually were proceedings against him, it would attract a great deal of attention from people who don't live in the news cycle, and a wider audience would come to a more thorough understanding of why Bush deserved to get canned.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 9:56 AM

So basically I'm saying Bush should be impeached just to provide the public with a much needed civics lesson.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 9:57 AM

The Dems have proved time and again that they're unwilling to stand up to Bush (they just did so again this weekend over the wiretapping bill). What in the world makes anyone think they'd be willing to throw the ultimate challenge of impeachment at Bush?

Posted by David | August 6, 2007 10:02 AM

This seems to me symptomatic of a trend that has become all too popular in GWB's Washington, and that I have found numerous examples of since I first saw it mentioned by Bruce Reed in his Slate column. The trend is viewing everything through the filter of political gain/loss only, real world consequences or attributes be damned. This is not new by any means, but in an insider culture where administration figures can destroy government finances by blithely saying that deficits don't matter, it's something that needs to be seriously addressed. Unfortunately, just as Washington internalized Reagan's idea of government as the problem, and so has embarked on a decades-long march of self-hatred and deliberate self-emasculation, now it seems that Democrats have internalized GWB's triumph of politics over policy, blithely ignoring that as lawmakers they, you know, MAKE THE F***ING LAWS.

Posted by jonathan | August 6, 2007 10:35 AM

Tomasky is just wrong about DailKos and impeachment. There's been a very robust discussion about the topic this year and large group of posters want the House Democrats to start impeachment procedings. Just search the July dairies on the site and you'll see numerous dairies calling for Bush's, Cheney's and Gonzalez's impeachment.

There was an attempt to set up an impeachment panel at YearlyKos and the organizers of the panel were rebuffed by the YearlyKos organizers. There's a serious disconnect between Markos and some of the site administrators and the site users about this issue. Markos and those folks would like the issue to disappear, but many users won't let it float away.

Shame on Tomasky for not doing some real reporting on this issue.

Posted by Sharon | August 6, 2007 10:39 AM

Right. Let's not worry about the truly horrible precedents that will be set by letting the Cheney criminal syndicate pass totally unscathed. No, clearly, the future of the republic is indistinguishable from the success of the Democratic Party in 2008 -- and all else must take a back seat to that.

Now, said Democratic Party can't seem to turn a position of strength (majorities in Congress, a Republican standard-bearer who's has become a distasteful joke) to any substantial advantage (no check on the Iraq disaster, no "card check" labor organizing reform, no meaningful rebuke for Gonzales, etc.). But never mind. After '08, these kittens are gonna be tigers, and they're gonna Fight! Fight! Fight! for everything on the progressive wishlist.

People who persist in this kind of thinking often end up in locked wards under medication. The refusal to even consider impeachment investigations is all the evidence you need that the Dems have no attachment to principle. After their glorious victory, they're gonna sell you down the river -- just like they always have.

Posted by sglover | August 6, 2007 10:51 AM

Impeachment is a losing issue in that the hurdles to actually forcing parts of this administration from office are so insurmountable that such removal will never happen. But that doesn't mean it's not a battle that should be fought. It just means that the goalposts aren't "getting the bums out of office" but are about reinforcing a Democratic position as the party of oversight, of accountability. Years of conservative misrule has handed them a golden opportunity to redefine their party (As the one that can, you know, actually govern.), but one that can easily slip away. And by continuing to try and tap-dance along the knife's edge of the polls that's exactly what they're doing. The focus isn't on politics over policy, it's on panic over principle. And the impulse of pundits like Mr. Tomasky to focus on "what other people think" over substantive debate is symptomatic of the underlying problem of reacting to rather than leading public opinion.

In short, grow a fucking spine and stand up for what you should believe in (And if you can't, get the hell out of the way for those who can.). Because the long term gain from losing a principled stand is much greater than the momentary benefit you gain from avoiding the confrontation.

Posted by Sausaletus Rex | August 6, 2007 10:58 AM

There was an attempt to set up an impeachment panel at YearlyKos and the organizers of the panel were rebuffed by the YearlyKos organizers.

This is actually based on miscommunication. (I know because I was the person who asked the YearlyKos organizers about this, on behalf of After Downing Street.) They were open to the idea and interested. But there just turned out not to be enough time to set everything up. This unfortunately got garbled somewhere along the line and turned into a Daily Kos diary saying that they wouldn't consider it because of the subject.

Posted by Jon | August 6, 2007 10:59 AM

I don't know. I think I'd trade a few items on the progressive wish list for a Bush impeachment. My concern is that otherwise a precedent will be set here, and future presidents will see in the Bush Administration's relative success at evading accountability a bright line they can use when they push their own agendas and potential abuses of power. Every step in that direction is a step closer to real tyranny. That may sound a little paranoid, and there is no real way to measure how real that threat is. But if it's possible for democracy to transition to something less free and more authoritarian, it's going to happen in little steps like this, where presidents run amok, and legislatures take a pass for political reasons rather than standing firm in the face of executive abuse. The principle of limited government is more important than any cause of the moment will ever be, and I would feel better if I thought congresspeople cared as much about it as they seem to care about their own political longevity.

Posted by Gordon Lightfoot | August 6, 2007 11:08 AM

They broke the law.
They are criminals.
Suggesting that they shouldn't be impeached because it would be politically inconvenient is morally indistinguishable from saying that a mob boss shouldn't be prosecuted because it would be politically inconvenient.

I am filled with contempt for their cowardice.

Posted by Anthony Damiani | August 6, 2007 11:33 AM

Jon

Thanks for the correction/update. Did you approach them before you got to Chicago?

Posted by Sharon | August 6, 2007 12:05 PM

To Gordon Lightfoot, with regards to the quote: "I don't know. I think I'd trade a few items on the progressive wish list for a Bush impeachment."

Would you trade the presidency in '08? If forcing the issue of impeachment resulting in a shift among independents sufficient to result in a President Giuliani, would you trade that for making sure that a precedent wasn't set here, even if impeachment ended up being unsuccuessful? That seems somewhat ridiculous to me: these guys are out in '08 as it stands right now, hopefully all the records will be available for declassification where necessary by a Democratic president and Congress, and then let the chips fall where they may.

Personally, although I do normally find Matt convincing and reasonable, this post seems clearly misguided. The fact that the votes aren't there isn't irrelevant; impeachment right now is every Republicans' defense against reasonable effective Congressional oversight ("The Democrats are just raising a bunch of nonsense about Libby and Gonzales and Cheney because they secretly want to impeach Bush, that's their real goal"). Given that the votes aren't there, having Pelosi take impeachment off the table makes it EASIER for effective oversight, because it defangs that natural Republican defense; if the oversight really is what matters (and let's be honest, the oversight at this point will get a sufficiently weakened GOP field overall in '08), then explicitly saying that impeachment is off the table clears the way to oversight for the sake of oversight, with the only goal being to see what these bastards have been up to for six years under an oversight-free regime.

Posted by msmackle | August 6, 2007 4:03 PM

I think the Dem leaders should acknowledge that, while they think this administration has committed high crimes and should be impeached, they understand that they don't have the votes to overcome the Bush loyalists in the Senate. They should instead put on the table the possibility of handing Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. over to the war crimes tribunal in 2009. It would certainly show some cahones, even if it were to be an empty promise. It might also get the administration to play ball and start to end this war and maybe hold back the veto pen on some of of the Dems' key legislation.

Impeachment has very little bite, except as a historic footnote, without a Senate willing to convict. A war crimes tribunal won't have many Bush sycophants lining up to pay homage. Imagine the fear in Bush's eyes if this were put on the table.

Posted by Ricky | August 6, 2007 4:51 PM

Tomasky argues, "But impeachment isn't the way to rebuild civic culture; indeed, it would do its own kind of harm."

Impeachment is EXACTLY the way to rebuild civic culture. Aside from the fact that enhanced investigatory powers might well turn up any number of smoking guns, even an unsuccessful impeachment would have a deterrent effect on future Caesars.

Speaking of civic culture, a great way to build civic culture is to allow a Nixon to escape impeachment, allow a Reagan to escape responsiblity for Iran-Contra, allow Bush I to pardon his Iran-Contra co-conspirators, allow Bush II to steal a presidential election, start a disastrous war based on a hoax, violate the Geneva Conventions, break many laws, including FISA, pardon co-conspirator Libby, allow the Attorney General to lie to Congress with impunity, etc. etc.

Repeatedly doing nothing to stand up for right versus wrong has had a GIGANTIC effect on civic culture that is precisely the reason that Bush, who took over the White House with fewer votes than his opponent, feels free to run roughshod over the Constitution with an approval rating in the mid-20's.

I AM SICK AND TIRED OF DEMOCRATIC PUNDITS ALWAYS ADVISING THAT THE CRAVEN MOVE IS THE SMART MOVE.

They are selling our country down the river.

Posted by Junius Brutus | August 6, 2007 5:26 PM