(NOTE: I gave a version of this speech on Sunday morning at Camp Democracy, on the National Block, just over a block from the White House.)
If the Democratic Party manages to gain at least 15 seats in the House of Representatives this November, the party's leadership, and its leaders in the House, will face a crisis.
Almost certainly, and in short order, some member--perhaps a newly elected first-term Democrat full of spit and vinegar--will introduce a bill of impeachment, which will go straight to a House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
Rep. Conyers, who has a new book out, The Constitution in Crisis, that lays out in detail many of this president's impeachable crimes and Constitutional transgressions, will unquestionably want to hold impeachment hearings on that bill, and any others that would likely follow it (there are currently 39 members of a House "impeachment caucus" iinclluding Conyers).
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who would be the Speaker of a Democratic House, has vowed that if Democrats win the lower house of Congress, "impeachment will be off the table." She and other Democratic heavyweights like Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), head of the Democratic House Campaign Committee, seem to think that impeachment is a bad strategy. They recall the Republican attempt to impeach President Bill Clinton, and how that backfired and led to seat losses for the GOP in the following election.
But Republicans were simply out to get President Clinton. They didn't have a case of high crimes or misdemeanors to work with, only a lie about a sexual liaison with an intern, and impeaching on that petty charge understandably angered many voters (besides, Republicans did pretty well two years later!).
Democratic leaders have it all wrong when they see Bush's impeachment as just a replay of the Clinton impeachment farce, though. Perhaps they've been listening too long and too fearfully to Bush's Rasputin, Karl Rove, who has been pouring his poison into their ears, warning that campaigning in 2006 on a platform of impeaching President Bush would play into Republican hands by "energizing the Republican base." After all, what about energizing the Democratic base, and the independent base, which calling for impeachment would surely do, given the president's sagging popularity and mounting public anger over the Iraq quagmire?
More importantly, though, is the fact that any impeachment effort against this president would involve, not petty malfeasance or illicit sex with interns, but major issues involving the very survival of the Constitution and of tripartite government.
Campaigning Democrats should be telling voters this fall that this president lied the country into a pointless, costly war. They should be telling voters he has weakened the nation and strengthened its enemies by condoning torture. Perhaps more importantly, though, since people will argue those points, they should be saying how President Bush has undermined the Founding Fathers' basic conception of three co-equal branches of government that check and balance each other. President Bush has for five years now claimed that as "commander in chief" in a "war" on terror, he has the power to ignore laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and even key parts of the Constitution like the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendments. He has claimed that as "commander in chief" he has the power with the stroke of a pen to invalidate all or parts of laws passed by Congress--over 850 of them, in fact. He has claimed that as "commander in chief" he has the power to arbitrarily deny prisoner of war protections to people captured by U.S. forces anywhere in the world. (The Supreme Court has shot down his "commander in chief" claim with respect to POWs, and by inference, for all the other actions of the president too, and a federal judge has said Bush violated FISA--a felony.)
On the matter of the so-called signing statements alone, Democrats in Congress have no alternative but to impeach the president, unless they want to render themselves vestigial. It wouldn't matter what progressive legislative agenda a Democratic House (or even a Democratic House and Senate) might pass; if the president could still issue signing statements invalidating such legislation without a veto, they would be unable to enact anything the president didn't want. Even Republicans should be worried about this one, since the next president, elected in 2008, (who might well be a Democrat and even the dreaded Hillary!), could simply cite Bush and continue the practice of signing statements to ignore acts of Congress.
It's not just that this is a winning campaign strategy. It is also important for Democrats to be talking impeachment because that's the only way that the corporate media, which are ignoring or scoffing at the idea of impeachment, will report on the seriousness of the threat to the country posed by Bush's assault on the Constitution. It's also a matter of being honest with the voters.
What is Rep. Pelosi thinking? Of course Democrats will impeach this president if they win control of the House.
Besides, their oaths of office mandate that they must. High Crimes and Misdemeanors aplenty have been and are being committed by President Bush and his administration, along with treason and bribery, and the only right thing to do at this point is to hold impeachment hearings to determine what was done and to mete out the appropriate penalty: impeachment.
If the Democratic Party manages to gain at least 15 seats in the House of Representatives this November, the party's leadership, and its leaders in the House, will face a crisis.
Almost certainly, and in short order, some member--perhaps a newly elected first-term Democrat full of spit and vinegar--will introduce a bill of impeachment, which will go straight to a House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
Rep. Conyers, who has a new book out, The Constitution in Crisis, that lays out in detail many of this president's impeachable crimes and Constitutional transgressions, will unquestionably want to hold impeachment hearings on that bill, and any others that would likely follow it (there are currently 39 members of a House "impeachment caucus" iinclluding Conyers).
But Republicans were simply out to get President Clinton. They didn't have a case of high crimes or misdemeanors to work with, only a lie about a sexual liaison with an intern, and impeaching on that petty charge understandably angered many voters (besides, Republicans did pretty well two years later!).
Democratic leaders have it all wrong when they see Bush's impeachment as just a replay of the Clinton impeachment farce, though. Perhaps they've been listening too long and too fearfully to Bush's Rasputin, Karl Rove, who has been pouring his poison into their ears, warning that campaigning in 2006 on a platform of impeaching President Bush would play into Republican hands by "energizing the Republican base." After all, what about energizing the Democratic base, and the independent base, which calling for impeachment would surely do, given the president's sagging popularity and mounting public anger over the Iraq quagmire?
More importantly, though, is the fact that any impeachment effort against this president would involve, not petty malfeasance or illicit sex with interns, but major issues involving the very survival of the Constitution and of tripartite government.
Campaigning Democrats should be telling voters this fall that this president lied the country into a pointless, costly war. They should be telling voters he has weakened the nation and strengthened its enemies by condoning torture. Perhaps more importantly, though, since people will argue those points, they should be saying how President Bush has undermined the Founding Fathers' basic conception of three co-equal branches of government that check and balance each other. President Bush has for five years now claimed that as "commander in chief" in a "war" on terror, he has the power to ignore laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and even key parts of the Constitution like the First, Fourth and Sixth Amendments. He has claimed that as "commander in chief" he has the power with the stroke of a pen to invalidate all or parts of laws passed by Congress--over 850 of them, in fact. He has claimed that as "commander in chief" he has the power to arbitrarily deny prisoner of war protections to people captured by U.S. forces anywhere in the world. (The Supreme Court has shot down his "commander in chief" claim with respect to POWs, and by inference, for all the other actions of the president too, and a federal judge has said Bush violated FISA--a felony.)
On the matter of the so-called signing statements alone, Democrats in Congress have no alternative but to impeach the president, unless they want to render themselves vestigial. It wouldn't matter what progressive legislative agenda a Democratic House (or even a Democratic House and Senate) might pass; if the president could still issue signing statements invalidating such legislation without a veto, they would be unable to enact anything the president didn't want. Even Republicans should be worried about this one, since the next president, elected in 2008, (who might well be a Democrat and even the dreaded Hillary!), could simply cite Bush and continue the practice of signing statements to ignore acts of Congress.
It's not just that this is a winning campaign strategy. It is also important for Democrats to be talking impeachment because that's the only way that the corporate media, which are ignoring or scoffing at the idea of impeachment, will report on the seriousness of the threat to the country posed by Bush's assault on the Constitution. It's also a matter of being honest with the voters.
What is Rep. Pelosi thinking? Of course Democrats will impeach this president if they win control of the House.
Besides, their oaths of office mandate that they must. High Crimes and Misdemeanors aplenty have been and are being committed by President Bush and his administration, along with treason and bribery, and the only right thing to do at this point is to hold impeachment hearings to determine what was done and to mete out the appropriate penalty: impeachment.
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