"Impeachment"? No. Let's Talk "Exit Strategy".

by RonK, Seattle

George W. Bush.
Worst. President. Ever.

How bad is that? Bad enough to animate a lively "Impeach Bush" community. Bad enough that 42% of voters polled might sign on if they knew Bush lied his way into Iraq.

One word of strategic advice to the impeachniks: Stop!

The situation at hand is too serious for impeachment. "High crimes" are at best incidental to the major case against Bush, and "Impeachment" talk drives us farther from every plausible goal, in almost every plausible set of circumstances. It is almost comprehensively anti-strategic.

Bush is bad, but how bad is bad enough? It's an important question. Somebody has to be Worst, and Worst isn't necessarily bad enough to justify jumping democracy's routine feedback cycle.

"How bad is Bush?"
"How bad is bad enough?"
"And what do we do if Bush is bad enough?"

Make these questions -- and not your immediate answers -- the core topic of our national conversation, and we may get somewhere.

Here's how bad I think it is.

The Bush Administration took office in campaign mode, intent on compounding its winnings and building a 19th-century political machine. It never picked up the mantle of governance. It set America on the road to ruin.

In the community of nations -- a community that becomes ever more adept at moving information, allocating capital, deploying technology and capturing resources -- America is no longer indispensible. We are becoming a spendthrift debtor nation, a rogue nation, a declining research power, and a third-rate competitor.

Our volunteer military is eroding in a sand trap, while enemies multiply. A failed tax stimulus scheme leaves all of us unwittingly living beyond our means, while a host of "new business" agendae -- from health care to identity theft -- go begging. We are divided against ourselves in politically motivated culture wars. We studiously ignore global warming and peak oil, but the world at large won't ignore our shiftless attitude.

We are in some kind of trouble.

Each predicament burdens us with global, generational disadvantages, and the clock is running on all of them. Each requires its own programmatic Exit Strategy, and most of these won't spring to mind painlessly. We're in for decades of damage control and reconstruction, there isn't any policy pipeline, and there isn't going to be any policy pipeline on Bush's watch ... just stepped-up PR efforts.

Before we can make any U-turns on the roads to ruin, we need a Grand Exit Strategy from the national disaster that is the Bush Administration. Of several ways to transfer power, let's take "Resignation" as our brand leader.

Bush is in the doldrums, and Democrats can take seize a  rhetorical initiative. "Opposition" is usually the way to go, but not now. We can talk "Impeachment". Or we can talk "Resignation" ... but not while "Impeachment" is on the table.

What's wrong with "Impeachment"?

• "Impeachment" frames the issue in terms of a showdown -- an upperdownvote. This freezes the evolution of popular attitudes, and calls the question instead -- pinning the whole debate on its own stark, binary endpoint. It polarizes the body politic (advantage, GOP) and lets scandal upstage policy differences (advantage, GOP).
• "Impeachment" unites Republicans. It effectively requires them to stake out pro-Bush starting positions, and dig in to defend them. Bush wins easily, and emerges with a stronger hand.
• "Impeachment" leaves Democrats divided on priorities, language, pace, individual political viability, and on many high legal, constitutional and historical principles we take seriously on matters of statecraft and precedent.
• "Impeachment" presents Democrats in the worst possible light: looking backward, arguing legal definitions of "high crimes" a brighter Bush might have cleanly avoided while pursuing the very same wrong-headed errors of historical proportion. It highlights our malice toward Bush, not our charity toward America.
• "Impeachment" is a political trophy hunt. It's about spite, intensity and personal satisfaction ... the pound of flesh, and Ted Rall's bile-belch of a last laugh.
• "Impeachment" is a non-solution. Once you get Bush, you've got Cheney. After Cheney, at the end of the string, you've got some cog in the Bush machine whose hands are clean enough to pass inspection, and the machine is still spinning.
• Finally, "Impeachment" is about the fantasies of a marginalized opposition, unable or unwilling to find real handholds on History. It's an entirely empty threat -- at least until such time as a huge number of Republicans come to see the Bush Era in a different light.

That brings us to "Resignation".

• "Resignation" begins as a consciousness-raising exercise, not a showdown. It engages America -- red, blue and purple -- in exploratory fact-finding, soul-searching and problem-solving. Open discussion, not snap judgments. It dwells on the magnitude of W's errors in leadership, the gravity of their consequences, and the scope and urgency of potential corrective measures. It's about national direction and civic responsibility, not personal destruction.
• "Resignation" leaves Republicans divided, along lines of policy and priorities, candor, viability, and post-Bush ambition. [The goal is a full-scale Presidential transition ... but to a new Republican (or a New Republican) administration.]
• "Resignation" divides Democrats, too, but it keeps our diverse views in play and on moral high ground.
• "Resignation" presents Democrats focusing on core issues, not incidental infractions ... looking forward to life after Bush, and the work ahead, for the good of the country.
• "Resignation" is a uniter, not a divider. It's about love, hope, patriotism, bipartisan unity, and responsible leadership.
• "Resignation" is more plausible than you might imagine (for reasons beyond the scope of this post), and in case it doesn't run to completion, it still leaves us ("us Democrats" as well as "us Americans") better off. Every leg of the conversation improves somebody's understanding of the error of Bush's ways. It creates a wiser America, a chastened Executive, and a GOP with at least one foot on the road to reform.
• "Resignation" is about facing facts, the way you'd like to see a grown-up opposition behave to show it deserves a turn at the wheel.

So save your high crimes and misdemeanors for CSI/DC. This is the real deal, and the stakes in the world-game are much too high for self-indulgent fantasy.

Start the conversation, focus on Exit Strategy, keep it moving. If we succeed, we'll have bigger fish to fry ... so be prepared to cut them their pardons and send them home.

I'll have more to say on Exit Strategy for individual Bush Era legacy problems, as well as the Grand Exit Strategy for transfer of power, but for now -- Happy Independence Day!

Comments

[Mimikatz]

Really, really interesting piece. It encapsulates much of what I have thought is wrong with the impeachment strategy but couldn't articulate, especially its polarizing, zero-sum nature, and why that makes it bad not good. And it points a way to talk in a more optimistic way about the future, which I think we need.

Last night I watched most of a 2 hour PBS show on higher education called "Declining By Degrees". It highlights one issue where this might work, because it touches so many people. It posited that the social and generational contract is breaking down, huge class divisions are emerging and rigidifying, and we are falling behind the rest of the world. A lot is due to declining governmental support for higher ed and consequent increases in tuition. But it is also the result of too much application of competition and market forces in an area where they don't necessarily belong (think healthcare too).

This is just one area, but it is emblematic of how we are going in the wrong direction, losing ground vis a vis the rest of the world, closing off upward mobility and shortchanging our future. Plus it is one that is less charged than Iraq or terrorism (which do have to be dealt with); and which touches most families.

I look forward to this discussion.

[Fred in Vermont]

>Of several ways to transfer power, let's take "Resignation" as our brand leader.<

I agree with you about the many problems with "impeachment" as a political focus.  But what I don't see is how "resignation" is really that much better.  It seems to me that it shares many of the problems of impeachment.  For example it will unite Republicans, it will personalize things in a distracting way,  and it is not going to happen.

Your discussion above about just how "bad" things really are, and how this is the fault of the current administration, seems to me to be the proper focus of our ongoing efforts to prepare to transfer power to new administration.

[jonnybutter]

Excellent post. Impeachment is not not not going to happen, unless something really reeking turns up. I'm repeating myself, but it evidently bears repeating: impeachment is a political excercize. It would never happen unless Republicans initiated it anyway (and, as is pointed out, if it were to happen, somehow, we'd get Cheney).

Kagro X has it (all if it) exactly right. The problem with Bush is not that he's simply mendacious, or a phoney, or just that he is the head of a one-party government; it's that he is simply a disasterously bad president - the worst we've ever had, overall. This is not about Democrats and Republicans. This is about damage control in a real crisis, a crisis with multiple fronts. Kudos to K-X.

[al-Fubar]

Well, this is interesting! As a matter of narrowly practical politics, it is as much of a won't-happen as impeachment - in modern times I can't imagine any body of Republican wise men passing the word that it's time to go, Bush wouldn't listen if they did, and there's still the Cheney problem.

But as a consciousness-raising rhetorical 2x4, it does have all the benefits mentioned, and would be much better than impeachment to have as a background rumble. If it catches on, it tends moreover to replace impeachment as a background rumble.

I'll mention one other point that RonK didn't - resignation, as a theme, evokes the drama of Watergate, not the farce of Monica.

-- Rick Robinson

[Kagro X]

I'm looking forward to Ron's answer to Fred. I need a little clarification myself, as to why resignation is substantively better, not just not-impeachment. But I can see it coming. And I'm buying into the basic premise, so that'll help.

Points also awarded to Rick for the Watergate/Monica comment.

Extra credit to jonnybutter, who I guess thinks that I wrote this excellent piece. Or if I'm mistaken about his being mistaken, I'll just pocket the praise and use it to shield myself mentally from the slings and arrows of Daily Kos denizens who still insist I'm a Republican plant, or at least a Vichy Dem.

[RonK, Seattle]

Kagro X offered a good word about impeachment here.

Mimikatz -- The dumbing of America is a big serious problem, but probably admits too many fuzzy philosophical dodges to nail Bush to the wall.

Rick -- Good point re Watergate vs Monica ... and please note I haven't put up the "can too happen" part yet.

KX -- Before responding to Fred, I'll have to reread and see if I left out some things I thought I put in ... and that will probably have to wait until after a heapin' helpin' of BBQ and fireworks.

[jonnybutter]

.. the slings and arrows of Daily Kos denizens who still insist I'm a Republican plant, or at least a Vichy Dem.

We are a nation of 'smart guys', always defending against the next threat - the one after the one we face currently. Libertarians (some of them) worry about Black Helicopters, and yet do nothing, in the mean time, to forestall their fulsome advent - in fact, they vote authoritarians into office. WTF?

The battle at hand is not about 'us'. It's about the country. If Democrats can't see that, then they don't deserve to win anyway. My reaction to the '04 election was rather dramatic , but not so different from KX's take now. We have to Hold The Line, limit mindless damage.
Grotesque as it may seem, we have to actually think about how DC works, how all elections work, and details and everything. We have to win elections.

Impeachment is also the nuclear option. It's not fair, but that's the way it fucking goes. Reacting to Republicans might be the right move at some points, but it must be a concious reaction. Otherwise, it's the cheesy feedback loop we seem to be stuck in.

It would be wonderful if Bush's 'commoner' side kick - the greazy individual who talks him into stuff - got peeled off. Bush all alone with just Cheney: vertigo! But we can't bank on that.

The difference between the Vichy French (the classic bad liberals) and what Kaygro says now is quite stark. We, now, are defending throughly established institutions, creaky though they might be. We are defending the very value of Rationality (which doesn't preclude religion, BTW), against our political foes in the ME, and also against our own cheap govermnent. Have the courage of your own convictions. Hold the line on these people as much as you can, without bombing the whole system, rotten as it is.

Read the post again.

[jonnybutter]

1.) Sorry for the engorged, wild-eyed post-party depression- rant above.

2.) Also sorry for misattributing the post (AGAIN, even after being set straight); good stuff Ron K.

[emptywheel]

One response I'd make to Fred in Vermont is that Resignation plays differently with Republican strategies.

I think I disagree with some here in believing that Impeachment MIGHT be possible, even with a Republican majority (and I thought this before the recent polling which showed the electorate somewhat supports me). That's because the GOP is really mired in corruption. And if there comes a time when they can collectively undertake an amputation of the most visible signs of corruption (DeLay and Bush), then they can, collectively as a party, make the case that they're the principled party, that they're willing to sacrifice their leaders in support of higher ethics. Meanwhile, they'd be able to engineer their recovery stratgy (Cheney plus Ford or something like it).

But I believe a resignation would be different. It would require some Republicans to gamble against Bush and the party machinery to pressure Bush. But it wouldn't allow the PARTY to appear the executor of the purge. In other words, Bush would be the final agent of change, not a GOP Congress. Which would mean only the members of the party who BELIEVE in those principles would get behind the resignation.

And I think it'd have one more advantage. I think it would be a lot harder for the GOP to design their own recovery strategy. I think it would be harder for the GOP to recuperate the marginal members of the Adminsitration.

To my mind, I don't want ANY solution that means we're going to continue to get recycled Nixon Administration and Iran-Contra Administration criminals in future Republican Administrations. Whatever we do to get rid of Bush, it needs to be a whole lot more lasting than our last two GOP Administration crises.

[RonK, Seattle]

I will comment further, but from comments I gather we first need a piece explaining the undefined term "strategy".

Fred -- I thought I indicated "Resignation" is only one of "several ways to transfer power", and briefly argued why it divides R's, and why it's much less personal. More on these points in future installments. I did not explain why it's more likely than you think, much I did lay down a marker. I also explained why it's a productive strategy even if it does not reach the nominal outcome. I suspect your reading is seized on endpoints. The answers are in the process.

Rick -- I was explicit that "transfer" entails a full administrative transition, hence, no Cheney problem. Cheney goes. They all go. As to the boundaries of imagination, stay tuned.

jonnybutter -- I'm flattered to be mistaken for Kagro X, and I made adjustments for the timestamp of your post vs a highly celebrated summer holiday.

emptywheel -- I don't imagine any turn in which W's minions don't keep resurfacing in future administrations. It just doesn't work that way (cf. Fred Malek). We take the best we can get, and do the best ew can with it.

[AlfonseP]

If I may jump in here for a moment? Talk of impeachment or resignation of Bush doesn't go far enough. He's a non-factor in my opinion. The problem is more his administration and the system that supports folks like them. Impeachment or resignation probably won't change things much since in effect, what we would be doing is trading one set of monsters for another.

I think we need to reform the whole ^%#$ system. We need to change everything about how people are elected to what we value as people.

This country is in alot of trouble.

[Bill]

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[Diesel]

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