Last Throes?

[unhappycamper]

Last Throes?
By: Eli


Boy howdy, the Bush administration is harder to kill than roaches. It seems like every week, sometimes every day, there’s a new revelation that should make the Bushies radioactive even to their own party, that should make the American people clamor for impeachment (at the least), and yet it never… quite… happens. It’s like all those happy turning points in Iraq that never quite lead to a secular democracy.

Not only is the sheer volume of outrages impressive; consider the diversity. You’ve got corruption, contempt, coverups, catastrophic negligence, endless war, torture, illegal domestic spying, leaks, perjury, all-out war on science and the Constitution, rampant politicization of government, people getting shot in the face, and… gay hookers. Hell, I’m already in double digits, and that’s only a partial list of broad categories.

There have been so many times I thought that maybe, just maybe, this will be the one to finally reveal BushCo. and the GOP as a thuggish criminal enterprise fronted by a craven, smirking moron, but their image never quite seems to take a direct hit. I think Katrina being the sole exception - the Bushies couldn’t spin a hurricane.

It’s true, Dubya’s approval and disapproval ratings are inexorably ratcheting down into Nixonland, but I think the national mood is more “This sucks and I can’t wait for it to be over” than “This is intolerable and must end NOW!” The demand for getting us out of the disastrous quagmire of the Bush administration is nowhere near the demand for getting us out of the disastrous quagmire of Iraq.

Quite frankly, I’m not entirely sure why this is. Is it because Clinton’s impeachment was such a farce that it discredited the whole process? Does the improbability of conviction make it look like a waste of time? Does the idea lack legitimacy because Congressional Democrats never talk about it? Or is it possible that Americans still think BushCo. is merely incompetent rather than criminal?

The corollary to the question of Why is the question of What: What would it take for the idea of impeachment to catch fire? What would it take for its necessity to become so obvious that even Senate Republicans and the media admit it? Is there some Grand Colossal Fuckup Threshold that Team Bush has to exceed on their own, or is there something that Congressional Democrats and/or the netroots can do to help them along? Will investigations and subpoena battles be enough? Will talking about impeachment make it seem more realistic?


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[The Magistrate]

1. A Good Article, My Friend

The thing is building, though: it seems to me refusal to press Congressional Contempt citations by Justice, at behest of Cheney or Bush, will provide the necessary spark. At bottom, this is an institutional battle between Congress and the Executive, or perhaps more precisely in this case for the latter, the Monarchy. Our system is predicated on the idea that each branch will be partisan against the others, and contend to expand its power and limit that of the others, and that regardless of party or faction, each Senator or Representative will be first a Congressional, each judge a Judicial, and each executive a Presidential. Congress has been sitting the contest out for a long while. The outrage against its institutional prerogatives that not processing the citations would constitute ought to be enough to get them in the game again....