Rep. Kucinich Renews Call For Bush Impeachment

Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich called for the impeachment of President Bush Monday. This marks Kucinich's latest effort (past attempts to initiate hearings have, thus far, stalled and been largely unsuccessful) to bring about some measure of Constitutional justice. Even today, Kucinich's move does not have much political support, though many of us non-politicians can certainly appreciate it in principle. This is especially true in light of former WH press secretary Scott McClellan's recently-published book about the Bush administration's propaganda machine and outright lies, and his (hardly-news-to-most) outline of how these paved the way for the nation's unlawful, immoral, and catastrophically bloody and costly invasion of Iraq.

The Ohio representative outlined his intention to propose more than two dozen charges against Bush on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Kucinich, a former presidential candidate, accused Bush executing a "calculated and wide-ranging strategy" to deceive citizens and Congress into believing that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she opposes trying to remove the Republican president who leaves office next January because such an attempt would be divisive and most likely unsuccessful.

Kucinich, an outspoken Iraq war critic who has consistently voted against funding the war and led anti-war efforts in Congress, offered a resolution to impeach Vice president Dick Cheney in April 2007. That also failed to move forward.

Many Democrats and civil liberties groups have accused the Bush administration of providing misleading information before the 2003 Iraq invasion as well as violating the rights of U.S. citizens with its warrantless surveillance program. The White House denies the charges.

I think it's important to file, and to keep filing, these impeachment charges, even as I also believe, with no small measure of sadness, that it's unlikely any attempt to impeach the President or Vice President will be successful between now and January 2009. Sometimes one must act in accordance with one's principles--and with the so-called governing principles of our Constitution, ahem--simply because it's the right thing to do.

If I could, though, I would have to ask Speaker Pelosi, for whom I have tremendous admiration and respect, to whom exactly is she referring with the term "divisive"? I mean, who here is not already on one side or the other?

Despite the traditional media's pooh-poohing or glossing over of anything to do with impeachment, and the liberal blogosphere's tendency to throw its hands in the air or cower in the corner--if not out-and-out demand the beheading of any blogger who dares suggest such a thing (as they did when I wrote about impeachment last year)--support for impeachment hearings continues to stand firm, with scholarly underpinning from both conservative and liberal camps:

Conservative constitutional scholar Bruce Fein and The Nation's John Nichols have both made compelling arguments for impeachment from the conservative and progressive perspectives including a bi-partisan appeal on Bill Moyer's Journal last July.

From the Bill Moyer's program:

"The founding fathers expected an executive who tried to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch... They [Congress] have basically renounced — walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check." — Bruce Fein

"On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this Administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any President has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools." — John Nichols

In a related development, Scott McClellan accepted Rep. Wexler's invitation to testify before the House judiciary committee:

President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.

McClellan will testify publicly and under oath before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 about the White House's role in the leak and its response, his attorneys, Michael and Jane Tigar, said on Monday.

Also at litbrit.

Comments

[Toast]

I've done my share of banging the impeachment drum, and I'm always surprised at how many fellow liberals disagree, in most cases on political grounds (e.g. "That would be political suicide for the Democrats!").

My argument is this: There is no rule, no law, no process of any kind that you can put in place that will prevent future administrations from following Bush's example of executive tyranny unless you first make the consequences of such unconstitutional overreach clear by punishing the current offenders. What form of prior constraint could possibly succeed if we allow the notion that the president can do whatever he wants during "wartime" to stand without rebuke?

[Stephen]

Support for reproductive rights is divisive. Attempting to change Social Security is divisive. The Iraq War is divisive. Raising and lowering taxes, raising CAFE standards, expanding Medicare, closing a military base, building a road - all divisive.

At the local level, planting a tree in a particular spot, or cutting one down, can be divisive. I know churches that have literally split because of arguments over the color of the carpet in the sanctuary - it's not just a cliche.

We can make anything divisive, and it never seems to cause too much consternation. But the divisions in political opinions are important. A decision made today quite literally can mean that someone will die tomorrow. Several thousand people will lose their jobs, and several thousand more will get hired. Communities will see radical improvements in their schools, while the same decision made in a statehouse or in DC will result in the complete collapse of another school district.

People's homes, jobs, futures, their very lives are dependent upon Speaker Pelosi and how she does her job. It shouldn't be too much to ask for her to remember the awesome respnosibility she has to the rest of us, and for her to be willing to step out on a limb every once in a while to fight for the Democratic principles that motivated the people across the USA to put the Democrats in the majority and ultimately, Pelosi herself in the Speaker's chair.

Even if that means some unelected, unaccountable gasbag on the teevee will call her "divisive."

[Toast]

Even the pronunciation of "divisive" is divisive. Personally, I go with the long second "i" (dih-VICE-ive). I don't know where this short "i" crap came from (blame the British?) but it's got to stop.

[Sir Charles]

Toast,

Are you not paying attention to who wrote this post? Ixnay on the Brit bashing or you're going to be in deep marmalade. (I say mar-ma-lahd like a pretentious Boston boy).

I say go Dennis. It's having balls like this that allowed him, a small woodland creature and pacifst leprachaun, to win the hand of the lovely Elizabeth. http://www.wikiality.com/Elizabeth_Kucinich

[Toast]

Are you not paying attention to who wrote this post? Ixnay on the Brit bashing or you're going to be in deep marmalade.

Oh, indeed, I assure you I was paying attention. I enjoy tweaking my favorite Brit. ;-) (Alas, as it happens, she agrees with me on this one.)

[Toast]

It's having balls like this that allowed him, a small woodland creature and pacifst leprachaun, to win the hand of the lovely Elizabeth.

Truly the stuff of fairytales, that love connection.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

One good reason for Pelosi to not push impeachment is that there's no way we're going to get 2/3 of the Senate to convict. With no hope of removing Bush from office, she doesn't want to expend too much political capital getting members behind something that won't result in any substantive gains.

Expending her energy on getting the party to support withdrawal from Iraq and blocking Social Security privatization was crucial. It's hard for me to see similar gains from squeezing an impeachment resolution through the House and watching it fail in the Senate.

If Pelosi wants to pretty it up for the folks at home by talking about how she doesn't want to be divisive, that's fine with me.

[litbrit]

Expending her energy on getting the party to support withdrawal from Iraq and blocking Social Security privatization was crucial

Neil, some of us are intelligent and forward-thinking enough to realize that if a President were held accountable for criminal actions (i.e. lying the nation into a war to the tune of unprecedented billions--is it trillions yet?) there would be powerful disincentive for any and all future presidents to get us involved in another Iraq. Or, for that matter, to sell out Social Security so his pals on Wall Street could benefit. And so on.

We do not know, not now, that a solid case for impeachment, with all the evidence available, would fail in either house of Congress. It's my sense that it would not fail, given the way the citizenry perceive this government and the pressure they'd bring to bear on their Congresspeople. And this without even conducting a single investigation! As for those who bemoan how long it would take, that's nonsense--it took a couple of months in Clinton's case.

What you're defending is just plain old backroom-deal-making politics at the expense of doing what is right. How does the "Ethical Werewolf" part of your persona feel about this?

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

We do not know, not now, that a solid case for impeachment, with all the evidence available, would fail in either house of Congress.

What evidence short of Bush personally telling Mohammed Atta to fly the planes into the WTC building will get 16 Republican Senators to vote for conviction? Look at GOP Senators' behavior over the last eight years and tell me if there's any chance that seventeen of them are going to vote to impeach the president on any grounds that we might find. They are not going to make a miraculous mass conversion into becoming decent and reasonable people.

What you're defending is just plain old backroom-deal-making politics at the expense of doing what is right. How does the "Ethical Werewolf" part of your persona feel about this?

Just fine! You know that I'm a utilitarian, right? We're known for pursuing wildly idealistic goals (maximizing the total happiness of all creatures) in brutally pragmatic ways. Backroom deal-making politics is perfectly fine by me, as long as it gets good results. In fact, I wish that instead of giving my money to antipoverty groups, I could give it to lobbyists who would corruptly get Congressmen to appropriate 60 times the money to antipoverty efforts. Somebody needs to set up a lobbying organization where I can do that...

In any case, politicians ought to use their political capital in the ways that help the most people, and it's hard to see how a improbable run on impeaching Bush (and elevating Cheney? or what?) does a lot to help anybody.

I care about setting up universal health care, keeping abortion legal, and maintaining peaceful relations with other countries. For these goals to be achieved, Obama must defeat McCain. It would be foolish to endanger his candidacy by disrupting the favorable issue mix that will allow him to win (take a look at the polling on impeachment versus the much more favorable numbers on the economy and Iraq) by making the big issue of 2008 one where he's on less favorable ground. The wedge issues need to be put where we end up with the bigger chunk of voters, not the smaller chunk. Right now we're on track for huge gains in the House and Senate, and Obama is leaping ahead of McCain as our party consolidates. Let's not mess this up.

Now maybe there's some kind of case that starting impeachment proceedings would help us pick up extra Senate seats, or somehow help Obama. And that's the case I need to hear, because the next four years are much more significant to me than the next seven months.

[litbrit]

Neil, nowhere do I state that Obama should be the one pushing for impeachment. It's not his job--his main job right now is to work the campaign trail and get himself elected President--nor should it be. There are plenty of non-candidate Congressmen who can and should take it on, however. As a Constitutional scholar, Obama would vote the right way when the time came for a Senate vote, I believe.

And I do see, and fully agree with, your point about doing the most good for the most people. In most every other scenario you could throw my way, I'd be right there with you, opining from the utilitarian mindset.

But regarding impeachment, what I have trouble with is this: why bother having laws--indeed, why bother having a Constitution--if nothing is ever enforced, and there are no consequences for violating anything? It is especially disturbing that the man to whom the nation entrusted its highest office, with all its attendant power, should commit the sort of offenses Bush has, and then get away with it scot-free because it's not "politically expedient" to hold him accountable for what, you cannot deny, are very serious violations of the law as well as the Constitution of this land.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

I know you weren't saying that Obama should push for impeachment -- you were talking about Pelosi and other major leaders in Congress. But Obama's situation is a big part of the reason why Pelosi and others shouldn't push for impeachment.

If they did, it would probably become the most-covered political issue of 2008. Obama would have to take a position and spend a whole bunch of time defending it. So would just about everybody in any House or Senate race. Pelosi, I'm sure, wants this election to be about the war and the economy, because we have tremendous advantages there. So she's helping Obama and everybody else win by making sure the major issues of this election are ones where overwhelming majorities support Democrats. (See why I love her?)

Now, it is a terrible thing that Bush can commit all these offenses I wouldn't have even imagined ten years ago and get away scot-free. But there's nothing that can be done about that without 67 Senators, and it's hard for me to see what the enforcement value of a failed impeachment is. (In fact, if the failed impeachment hurts Democrats politically, the opposite lesson could be learned -- committing high crimes in the right circumstances isn't a political loser!)