In keeping with the unconventional views that bring people to this site, I am going to differ with a great many of my colleagues on the left–people whose ideas I value–and state that I believe the effort to impeach George W. Bush is misguided. Forget for a moment issues with the Constitutional justification for such an action, forget for a moment whether the evidence warrants the undertaking and forget even the impact on an already contentious nation. Impeachment is a bad idea for tactical and moral reasons.
In a little over a year America will go to the polls to elect a new administration. Although the Republican Party has been seriously wounded by the corruption and misguided policies of the Bush Administration, it still constitutes a formidable force. There is an old backwoods truism: there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded bear–or elephant.
The Iraq War has inflicted the worst wound, but anyone who thinks they can predict what the situation in Iraq will be a year from now is a fool. Rather than being a trump card I believe it is a joker–and in this game jokers are wild.
Given the uncertainty of Iraq and the election, does it make tactical sense to expend the precious intellectual, organizational, and financial resources an impeachment effort would take–especially given the outcome is far from certain? From a purely tactical perspective those of us on the left face two difficult choices: we can devote ourselves to impeaching Bush or we can devote ourselves to replacing the Republicans in the White House. We cannot do both.
As one who has written extensively on values and the Republican Counterrevolution, I do not like this choice any better than anyone else. But like it or not it is reality. If the decision is made to proceed with impeachment, it will take months to gather evidence and hold hearings. Finally would come the actual Congressional decision.
The cases of Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson are instructive. The Judiciary Committee began its hearings to determine whether sufficient evidence existed to impeach the President in February of 1974. The last of those hearings was in early July. Richard Nixon would resign on August 8. All this was proceeded by the famous Senate Watergate Committee hearings which began on May 18, 1973. Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial began March 23, 1868 and ended with his acquittal on May 16.
The Democratic Party would need to muster all of its legal, financial and public relations resources to assure any hope of success in an impeachment effort. Those of us on the grassroots level would have to organize support for that effort. All this would take precious resources away from the campaign at a time when it can least afford to lose them.
Through the monumental efforts of Howard Dean and groups like America Votes, unions and public interest groups like Emily’s List, the Democratic Party has finally pulled off one of the most dramatic political reversals in American history–erasing two decades of the GOP’s political advantage in fund raising. An impeachment effort would wipe this out in an instant.
Why? Because the GOP’s financial base has always come from the rich and corporations. We have nullified this through the donations and work of millions of ordinary Americans who are fed up with the Counterrevolution. But with an impeachment effort, people like me will be forced to choose how to write our checks. For us it will be either/or. Corporations and the rich can afford to write two checks.
As with everything else these days, impeachment will be fought as much in the media as in the halls of Congress. You know the same people who financed the Swift Boat effort and Sinclair Broadcasting’s “mocumentary” of John Kerry will conduct a relentless media campaign, especially in swing districts.
And make no mistake, those swing districts will be the front lines. We took back Congress by winning those swing districts. An impeachment effort will ask those newly-elected men and women to spend time on impeachment and not on campaigning. The amount of pressure put on them will be like nothing we have ever seen. Given that these are swing districts, the case against Bush will have to be at least as persuasive as Watergate. With the Bush Administration playing hardball with executive privilege backed by a Supreme Court that leans in their direction, the conflict to even gather evidence promises to be intense and protracted.
All this pales behind the moral argument. Impeachment advocates believe this is the strongest part of their case. After all, in their view we must impeach a President who has lied to the American people and caused the needless deaths of thousands of Americans, Iraqis, and others. Yet I would argue a moral position I believe trumps this: the increasing and deliberate tilt of the playing field. In short there are many times more people dying because the same immoral administration is killing more people at home than in Iraq.
The number of murders in Philadelphia alone approaches the number of American soldiers killed in Baghdad so far this year. America risks losing an entire generation of young black men and women who once they are lost, we cannot bring them back.
Native Americans, Hispanics and rural Americans also are facing a crisis. When young people died in Red Lake, Minnesota a few years ago it served as a symbol for those who were dying in others ways. Latinos are now under siege by an ugly nativist movement determined to make them the scapegoats for our nation’s problems. Meanwhile rural towns are dying as surely as if someone had dropped a bomb on them.
On top of this, add the deaths of people who have perished because of inadequate health care. The World Health Organization reports that this country now has an infant mortality rate worse than Cuba or Croatia. It is difficult to compile statistics of those adults who died because of inadequate care, but WHO also keeps statistics on adult mortality. They rank us behind all industrialized countries and almost the same as Panama. Then there are those lives that could have been saved had this administration not taken a hardline on stem cell research and cutback on overall medical research.
Ethicists I know dislike intensely having to differentiate between types and numbers of unnecessary deaths. But at some point scale must enter the argument. Impeaching Bush might atone for Iraq, but retaking the White House might save more lives through improved health care and social programs. It might just save a generation of African Americans and Indigenous people. It would reinvigorate medical research that might find a cure for cancer or AIDS or prevent a pandemic caused by bioterrorism.
An ethicist I talked with the other day also brought up a point I had not thought of: what she termed the interpersonal dimension of George Bush’s impact. Her main case for this was the Supreme Court. The Democrats HAVE to win this election to prevent this Court from turning even further to the right. If Rowe v. Wade is overturned, we can expect that women will have a tougher time getting abortions which will mean a possible return of the deaths, mutilations and suffering women faced in the days of so-called “back-alley abortions.”
George Bush will have to answer for his actions whether he is in the White House or not. With a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress that investigation can take place anyway. More pointedly, George Bush represents one head of a multi-headed monster. Cutting off one head won’t even worry the monster, but winning the White House would deal a deep wound.
As I watch the Philadelphia murder rate increase all too rapidly on the meter on Field Negro’s page, I think of the bright, creative people whose energies now are spent on impeachment who could be helping to prevent that meter from climbing further. The thought of it increasing unsettles me. It is like watching a crowd chase after a suspected criminal while a fifty-story building full of families burns out of control.
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