Impeach Bush -- Not Such A Bad Idea After All

Will it force the media to focus more intently on Bush's "crimes and misdemeanors?" Yes. Will it weaken the administration's position on Iraq by adding more political energy to the anti-war movement? Yes.
This post was published on the now-closed HuffPost Contributor platform. Contributors control their own work and posted freely to our site. If you need to flag this entry as abusive, send us an email.

It remains to be seen how much political traction a movement to impeach President Bush can muster in the nation's capital. With eighteen months remaining in his imperial reign, it's still worth a gamble, still worth pursuing.

So kudos to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D- CA) for firing that first salvo late last week when she announced that "she asked four presidential scholars for their opinion on former White House Counsel John Dean's statement that President Bush admitted to an 'impeachable offense' when he said he authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge."

Boxer later went on the Ed Schultz talk show and said impeachment of the President "should be on the table." (And let's place it right beside those Iraqi benchmarks.)

Domestic spying is the least of Bush's sins. It's like convicting Al Capone for tax invasion. The Decider-in-Chief has reinterpreted the meaning of the Oval Office, and rather than restoring dignity -- as he so often promised during the 2000 presidential race -- he has besmirched it with an unprecedented power grab.

Of course we can't blame one man for getting us into Iraq, illegal eavesdropping, cronyism, torture, gutting of the Judiciary, and overall incompetence. He had plenty of help from Cheney, Rove, and their enablers.

It's not so much as a fish-rots-from-the-head thing. It's that Bush is intellectually and morally ill-equipped to run this country, especially when so many more young American soldiers will die or get wounded in Iraq on his stubborn, myopic watch.

Here's why impeachment matters. Anything to tie up George, Karl and Dick with additional headaches is a good thing for America. Just because they squirmed scot-free with Scooter, it doesn't mean that they should get a free pass. Wouldn't we all be better off if their days and nights were spent huddling with lawyers instead of causing more lasting political damage?

Impeachment is the kind of partisan gambit whose efficacy should be determined not only by whether there's enough votes to impeach Bush, let alone have the Senate convict him, but by the impact it will have in changing the debate on how America views the president despite his already abysmal approval ratings. Will it clarify and solidify our disgust? I think so. Will it force the media to focus more intently on Bush's "crimes and misdemeanors?" Yes. Will it weaken the administration's position on Iraq by adding more political energy to the anti-war movement? Yes.

Support for an impeachment surge is the reverse of a troop surge.

Bush continues to use his Oval Office bully pulpit with complete disregard for those who disagree with his unpopular policies. If he's immune to change, then let's put a burr under his saddle.

He cares a great deal about how history will look back upon his presidency. So why not have that big "I" by his name, just like an asterisk next to some future steroid-using Hall of Famer. We need to delegitimize his political rule.

Though we shouldn't make impeaching the president habit-forming, the stains Bush is leaving on the Constitution are far more damning than the Clinton stain left behind on Ms. Lewinsky's blue Gap dress.

Perhaps as a preliminary step to drawing up articles of impeachment, we should establish a benchmark report card -- just like the bogus one on Iraq's dubious progress that the administration presented last week. Its spin was breathtaking in its reach for plausibility. Its own interpretation of "satisfactory progress" is like a doctor examining a someone in a brain-dead coma and saying, "the patient's still breathing and alive and that's a good sign that things might improve."

How can the situation get any better in Iraq when whatever political breathing room there was supposed to be following the surge has been choked and smothered in continued religious violence. With the Iraqi parliament jetting off to Dubai for R&R while brave young U.S. soldiers patrol lethal swaths of the country in sweltering global-warming desert heat, there won't be much, if any, progress with the political situation until September when General Petraues's report comes due.

So this gives us more breathing room right now and right here in America to tighten the impeachment thumbscrews on Bush. Too often, he has managed to hold all the cards in shaping the national dialogue. Because of where he's sits in the White House, he's given himself carte blanche to lie or grossly distort the truth whenever it suits his purposes.

The mere hue and cry of impeachment will put the Republicans even more on the defensive as they contort themselves in different positions on the war. It's important that those who favor impeachment ignore the catcalls of being labeled partisan, unpatriotic, or not supporting the war or our troops. We've played that rhetorical game far too long.

Let's impeach Bush. Should the vote pass and he goes up for trial in the Senate, it will be interesting to watch Vice President Cheney preside in that chamber. He'll feel right at home. After all, he did maintain that the Office of the Vice President "is not part of the executive branch." But there's an outside chance that Cheney himself might face impeachment first if U.S. House Resolution 333 picks up momentum.

Impeachment is not a diversion from the war. It's the correct conclusion to a tragic narrative. Support the Boxer rebellion.

Bill Katovsky is also the editor of Politixxx.com

Popular in the Community

Close

What's Hot