You Can't Take a Poll to Decide if the Law Should Be Enforced

[Fireweed247]

“The limitation of the period of his service, was not a sufficient security…He might lose his capacity after his appointment. He might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers…In the case of the Executive Magistracy which was to be administered by a single man, loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic.”

–James Madison, July 20, 1787, at the Constitutional Convention which made provision for impeachment


"There's a way to bring an end to those practices, you know: vote the bums out…That's how our system is designed." –Barack Obama, June 28, 2007, on impeachment

That’s not how our system is designed.

The promise of another election was not enough to stop an Executive from abusing power in James Madison’s opinion but unfortunately, the Democratic candidate for president, much of the Democratic Party, and its constituents find the promise to be enough. And incidentally, it has never been enough.

John Nichols describes eloquently why waiting is not “wiser” than impeachment or good enough in his book The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism (brackets added for effect):

Unfortunately, in the contemporary moment, when the point and promise of impeachment is so little understood by politicians and pundits, political pragmatism often trumps health partisan impulse to challenge an executive whose administration has spun out of control. Opposition leaders worried about appearing too aggressive in their affronts to a president of the competing party , back away from the battlements. They counsel caution, suggesting that it is “wiser” to wait until an election, when, if their thinly veiled hopes are realized, power will be handed to them by frustrated and fearful voters .

The problem with this equation, of course, is that it robs the process of the dynamism that is essential to checking and balancing the executive branch. An opposition party that “waits for the next election” is not being bipartisan, it is being politically strategic.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/You-Can-t-Take-a-Poll-to-D-by-Kevin-Gosztola-080615-183.html