Good Article! Media and Impeachment - Not for discussion, only for derision

[IndyOp]

Media and Impeachment
Not for discussion, only for derision

By Cynthia Cooper

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On the weekend of April 28, impeachment rallies raised the issue in 125 locations, including Seattle, Minneapolis, Boston, Honolulu and Memphis. On April 20, the Vermont Senate passed 16–9 a nonbinding resolution supporting impeachment proceedings. On March 1, the Washington State Senate held hearings on SJM 8016, which would be a formal request for an investigation of the sort states are allowed to make under the House of Representatives’ impeachment procedures. Scores of towns and cities passed resolutions, which, if nonbinding, demonstrate public hunger.

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Yet perusers of mainstream media would be hard-pressed to find discussion of any of this—impeachment, it seems, is off the assignment desk.

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The tone of coverage was set in a December op-ed by history professor David Greenberg (Washington Post, 12/3/06), who argued that Bush wasn’t nearly as bad as Nixon. “Something close to a national consensus emerged” about the need to remove Nixon, Greenberg wrote, and “no such consensus exists for a Bush impeachment.”

But the “consensus” on Nixon came after five months of inquiry by the House Judiciary Committee, complete with subpoenas, sworn testimony and a staff of 100. When the committee approved three articles of impeachment on July 27–29, 1974, more than one-third of the members held out for Nixon. A full consensus only emerged days later, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Nixon to release tapes that contained damning comments by the president, and Nixon resigned.

Since there has been no inquiry into the Bush administration, a comparison is not apt. Nonetheless, the public “consensus” on Bush places him in close proximity to the low regard the public had for Nixon when he departed. A Harris poll taken April 20–23, 2007 put Bush’s approval rating at 28 percent. In August 1974, when Nixon resigned, his approval rating was 24 percent, and at that moment of “consensus,” he had a lower disapproval rating (66 percent) than Bush had in April (70 percent).

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3149