Someone's Clueless, All Right

I read this column from Inquirer editorial page editor Chris Satullo Sunday, and I had a few different reactions. I think I have more “common cause” with Satullo than not, but he still said some things that concerned me.

Focus on mid-term elections instead

Where is it? ask the phone calls, e-mails and left-leaning bloggers. What are you waiting for?

Where's what?

The Inquirer editorial calling on George W. Bush to resign, that's what. Or one calling for him to be impeached.

I contacted PA State Representative Daylin Leach about trying to initiate impeachment proceedings, but he said he knew he wouldn’t be able to move forward with it because he didn’t have support. I should point out, by the way, that Leach doesn’t represent my district – I have Republican representation from Dave Steil and Joe Conti, for now. That’s as far as I went because I didn’t see hope in going further than that. I never contacted the Inquirer – maybe I should have, especially since they’ve published other letters on that topic, but I was trying to make my case at this site as opposed to elsewhere, which I thought was a better place to state my position.

People are peppering me with those questions because of something this paper's Editorial Board, which I lead, did in September 1998.

We called on Bill Clinton to resign.

Also, I guess, because of something we did in October 2004: published 21 issues editorials documenting why George W. Bush deserved to be fired by the voters.

You also published opposing editorials for most of those days, which I think was the journalistically responsible thing to do. As Satullo himself pointed out at the time, that was better than what the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page did, which was to publish a month’s worth of hosannas to Dubya in September ’04 without anyone making a case for John Kerry.

I concede the paradox: Why turn on a President you endorsed, but turn silent when the topic is impeaching one you deem a disaster?

To explain. We write editorials in hopes of doing two things: clarifying issues for our readers and having an impact on events where possible.

We called on Clinton to resign because we thought Democrats weren't thinking clearly, letting their anger at the other guys' venom trump their values and the nation's good.

I always wondered about that…Clinton was supposed to resign because the Democrats were too angry? Satullo also pointed out another reason at that time that was eminently more practical, and that was to install Gore and have him run in 2000 as the automatic incumbent. However, I still think that would have stained Clinton’s presidency to a greater degree than he actually deserved.

We thought that, as a paper that had endorsed the man twice, we had standing to tell Clinton he had to go, that what he'd done was too disgraceful and damaging to the centrist agenda.

Our fear was that Clinton's pigheaded deceits would hand firmer control of the government to his right-wing antagonists. Those foes overplayed their hand in 1998. But in 2000, Clinton's stubbornness brought us George W. Bush.

So George W. Bush is Clinton’s fault? Yeah, I guess ol’ Bill shouldn’t have been at the helm of all of that prosperity and non-war, huh? I suppose. And that business of the Florida recount fiasco and Gore’s slow uptake to some of the Repug dirty tricks, and Gore’s eternally dunderheaded decision not to let Clinton campaign with him in the swing states…that’s Clinton’s fault too?

Contrast 1998 with 2006.

I can’t – it’s too painful.

First, impact: What impact could a resignation editorial possibly have on George W. Bush? He's a guy who ignores good advice from his friends, let alone from a pack of pundits who harp on his flaws.

I have to admit that that’s a good point.

As for impeachment, print journalists haven't filled columns with chatter about it for the same reason they aren't writing a lot about Monmouth's chances of winning March Madness. It ain't going to happen. Not as long as Republicans control Congress.

The real focus ought to be the coming midterm election. Unless Democrats win at least one house of Congress, the President's policies will continue to elude serious scrutiny.

That’s an even better point – whatever resources we have at our disposal should be used to accomplish that goal above all others.

It seems the American public is thinking pretty clearly this time around. Pollsters say the level of public discontent with Congress and the nation's direction right now resembles the mood in 1994, when the Gingrich gang won.

Gerrymandered districts and the perks of incumbency still pose high obstacles to a Democratic triumph in the midterms (as does the party's own feebleness of mind). But a reverse '94 is plausible.

So what do liberal Democrats, full of pent-up bile, want to do? They want to embrace the one tactic designed to fritter away their chances: howling "Impeach!"

OK, let’s get something straight here. That sentiment plays into the “bloggers are crazy, especially the lefties” theme that our dear MSM cousins like to cultivate (at the time of the Harry Whittington shooting by Cheney, some lefties called that “Cheney’s Chappaquiddick,” which I said at the time was a nutty comparison partly because it gives that theme more potency). However, Satullo makes it sound as if people like me, who have the “Impeach Bush” banner in the right diagonal column…which isn’t going anywhere, by the way…want that goal accomplished above all others. I realized long ago that that’s not going to happen, as did notables like Arianna Huffington, but THAT DOESN’T MEAN THAT YOU BACK DOWN. When have the Repugs ever backed down about anything? So we gear up for the midterms as Satullo said, since taking a house of Congress will STILL be a huge challenge in the fall, let alone both.

Most disenchanted voters want Congress to be less partisan, to spend more time solving problems, less time gouging eyes. To win in districts drawn up to protect GOP incumbents, Dems need to attract moderates and independents who may be disappointed with W. but don't hate him.

As I said, when do Repugs ever back down? I disagree with Satullo in the sense that the Democrats can – and should – be partisan on this and lay the blame squarely where it belongs. But I agree with Satullo that the goal of such a tactic is ultimately to solve the problems that the Repugs have ignored.

These are the same sensible voters whose refusal to sign up for the unending persecution of Bill Clinton confounded the right wing in 1998.

Do liberals seriously believe voters will flock to this message: "Vote for me and I will put the nation through yet another bruising, distracting and ultimately pointless impeachment fight"?

No, that should not be the number one priority, as I jut said. The Dems will stand or fall on the issues, though I definitely support Russ Feingold’s call for censure. There’s nothing wrong with calling for impeachment, even if it turns out to be a totally symbolic gesture, though with this president, who knows what else he may do that would warrant such a call? Myself, I’m getting a little tired of this narrative that the Dems must completely cower in the face of Repug hostility to win. This is more DLC garbage that has gotten the party ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE.

Most voters have seen that movie and hated it. They saw how Republicans wielded the Constitution as a partisan club to harass a president they couldn't beat at the polls. By now, they also know how that farce distracted the U.S. government from dealing properly with little matters such as the rise of al-Qaeda.

An excellent point, though Satullo should give the people of this country credit for being smart enough to realize when impeachment proceedings are truly warranted and when they’re not.

What's more, as the New York Times reports, impeachment chatter has been a boon to demoralized conservatives. Instead of grousing about W. among themselves, they can do what they do best: unite behind a common enemy, liberals.

I don’t get this at all. So…we’re all supposed to shut up about impeachment because it mobilizes the right-wing zanies? I’ve got news for Satullo…THEY HATE LIBERALS ANYWAY, REGARDLESS OF WHAT WE SAY OR DO! I will, however, point out that, in the Inquirer yesterday, Satullo’s column ran alongside one by Jonathan Last, a Repug sympathizer who basically said, “Yeah, sure liberals, keep calling for impeachment,” no doubt in an effort to make Satullo’s remark a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yet bloggers on the left, sitting in digital silos as self-righteous and distorting as those of the right, have convinced themselves that blaring about impeachment is the ticket to victory. Clueless.

As I said, I never considered it “a ticket to victory,” but the proper response to Bush’s criminal conduct.

OK, I've avoided the central question: Does the man deserve to be impeached?

First, the GOP recklessness of 1998 makes it hard to recover any sound definition of the constitutional standard for impeachment: "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Myself, I'd rule out Iraq. Tragic as that skein of blunders has been, it was the product of delusional arrogance - of incompetence, not crime. That should be punished at the polls, not in the dock of the Senate.

I’ve called Bush’s war illegal since it was deliberately fought for reasons that were lies and intelligence information was willfully cherry-picked to suit the purposes of invasion. And assuming the Democrats somehow return to power in the fall – a big “if,” I know – how does that hold Bush accountable? So does that mean that Bush “skates” altogether on Iraq? He, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal should be tried at the Hague, not forced to deal with the inconvenience of having to govern for real with an opposition party controlling Congress in a best-case scenario.

What about the high-tech surveillance the President approved without warrant or clear statutory authority? Impeachable offense? Hard to say. His post-9/11 impulse to snoop was understandable. What wasn't was his five-year failure to put the program on sound legal ground. Right now, though, not even Congress knows enough about the true story of the snooping to answer the question.

FISA stipulated that what Bush did was illegal (and is Satullo going to make me produce the link to the White House web site where Bush, in April ’04, said that he wasn’t doing something that he, in fact, WAS doing and HAD BEEN DOING FOR SOME TIME??). Beyond that, Bush, in typical fashion, basically said that he would continue to break the law, ignoring FISA until it was changed. That is grounds right there. That makes the president a criminal.

This president's most unforgivable offense has been the rampant evasion of American and international law that fostered the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. His despicable wink-at-torture mind-set violates the premise of the Declaration of Independence: All humans have inalienable rights, the right not to be tortured among them.

Yet torture is the impeachment topic least likely to generate traction with the public.

Maybe impeachment talk is just a way to vent spleen over an exasperating president. That's forgivable.

But as a strategy to prevent this man from doing more harm, it's foolish.

It’s hard to argue with what Satullo says about torture, since that goes hand-in-hand with his conduct of the war. However, as I said earlier, I believe it is important to keep “beating the drum” on impeachment as an option to punish Bush. It may or may not be only symbolic, but I don’t think we know completely at this point. God help us, but we’re stuck with Dubya as of now until 1/20/09.

Satullo mentioned earlier how frustrated the wingnuts got when about 70 percent of those American polled decided that the Clinton/Lewinsky thing wasn’t a constitutional crisis. Did that stop them or make them change their tactics?

Well then, it shouldn’t stop us either, should it?

Update 3/21 11 AM: Did you know that the IRS under Bushco wants to allow “third parties” access to your tax data?

Or that “our government” also wants to sell off forest land, by auctioning more than 300,000 acres of national forest to fund "a rural school program"?

Who do you think is responsible for putting nitwits in charge of these agencies that would consider this to be an acceptable way for our government to operate?

(Update 3/21 3PM - As a commenter noted, he always leaves his messes for someone else to clean up. How proud George H.W. and "the beautiful mind" must be.)

Every single day, there is some new battle to fight with Bushco.

That is why, every single day, regardless of whether we are "tilting at windmills" or not, we must call for impeachment. I know the logical consequence is that Cheney would get "the big chair," and that is basically the situation we have anyway, but that NEVER means that we should stop fighting.