Why Not Impeach Bush?
Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table. I was angry about that until this morning when I looked at the situation through her eyes:
- She had to know that impeachment of Bush without impeaching Cheney would just be a cruel joke.
- She also had to know that of any President & VP ever impeached, the charges against these two would stick (because we all know they deserve it!).
- She did the math — if Bush goes, the Vice President takes the office; if both go, the speaker of the house takes the office.
- As soon as she was considered for the office of Speaker of the House, the potential for her ascendancy to the presidency was on her mind– had to be. How would it look? How would the conservative talk radio spin machine treat it? “Oh how brave of the house Democrats to take on impeachment, and sacrifice one of their own to take up the presidency.” She knew that consiglieri such as Karl “If The High School Bullies Could See Me Now” Rove would howl in ecstasy at the prospects for damaging the Democratic party during the run-up to the ‘08 elections.
- And I honestly don’t think that she would have wanted to appear to be maneuvering her way into the Presidency without being elected. All the (justifiable) accusations of election-stealing against Bush in 2000 would have dissolved in the brouhaha Republicans and their talk-radio minions would create in the mock outcry against Pelosi’s “grab for power.”
I don’t think (assuming she desires it) Pelosi wants the Oval Office in any other way than being elected into it (the old fashioned way, the way we used to do it, before the regime of Bush II). And that’s probably why impeachment is off the table.
If she stepped down as speaker, in order to take the heat off of herself, she would then only be turning some other Democrat into a martyr.
The reason that impeachment is off the table has everything to do with Nancy Pelosi’s de facto power to determine who would be the president when the impeachment process ended.
That’s my theory anyway…