There's No Justification for Impeachment

Mark Davis

Plenty of presidents have been hated, and some have objectively deserved it. Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon both deserved impeachment. Mr. Clinton was in fact impeached and Mr. Nixon would have been had he not resigned.

Of other presidents roundly despised by millions - Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Reagan - history will note that their loudest critics never launched any serious impeachment buzz.

Impeachment has historically been the desired remedy for presidencies that simply needed to end, not just a gotcha for the controversial ones.

Until now.

Generally, a president's enemies have known that elections have consequences and the chance to vote for someone else was never more than four years away. That level of maturity is shot to smithereens today, as the George W. Bush Impeachment Cult gathers nerve and mild momentum.

Why is it simply not enough for Bush critics to direct their efforts toward a more palatable successor? The New Hampshire primaries are only two Januarys away, yet the bug-eyed urgency rampant in the Impeachment Compounds on Capitol Hill and elsewhere speaks to a pathology that could become the dominant agenda item should Democrats make big gains in the 2006 elections.

Two factors fuel the impeachment movement: the inability to absorb the fact that Bill Clinton was impeached and deserved it, and the inability to cope with a war whose methodologies they do not embrace or perhaps even understand.

I don't mean that as a cheap shot. If someone says they do not believe Iraq can be democratized or that we should have devoted more attention to Afghanistan and bin Laden or that the Patriot Act and NSA wiretaps are beyond their civil liberties tolerance, that is a coherent opposition that I would simply disagree with.

But if someone asks why we went to war, or mouths those defeated old canards about "no blood for oil" or "Bush lied, thousands died," that is pure idiocy. Sadly, that view can be found on the bumper stickers of inconsolable Gore and Kerry voters, and on the lips of more than a few members of Congress.

All this talk of Democrats regaining the House or Senate is a premature fad. Low Bush poll numbers do not equal an instant opportunity for Democrat gains. The left must coherently offer sound alternatives on both war issues and domestic policy, and do so with likable, civil candidates.

The Impeachment Cult throws a big wrench into that, and sensible Democrats know it. In fairness, many Bush critics are embarrassed by these rhetorical excesses, but that has not slowed the zeal of opportunists who think they can carve out a special place in the heart of the Bush-hating portion of the electorate.

"High crimes and misdemeanors" is the standard required for impeachment of a president. The prime logical flaw of those seeking that fate for this president is that the "crimes" they see are either things that are not illegal at all (prewar intelligence flaws, the bad Katrina response, etc.) or matters whose criminality remains in great question (NSA wiretaps, detainee interrogations, etc.).

This crowd never got over the successful Republican-led impeachment of Mr. Clinton, which stemmed not from sexual behavior but by the crime of lying under oath to fix a lawsuit. Political bigots have created a default setting that says Republican presidents who do things they do not like will be met not only with debate but with cries for impeachment.

The price for this tantrum will be the loss of millions of independent and crossover votes in 2006 from voters who still await the return of the sane and responsible Democratic Party they once knew.