| Tomorrow night in Norwalk, there'll be an impeachment forum with Dan DeWalt, one of the organizers of the Vermont state legislature's impeachment resolution. It'll be a lively conversation – even though a similar approach is closed until after 2008 here in Connecticut (since there's no more opportunity for CT legislators to file new bills) – with a fun crowd.
Impeachment is one of those things where I don't feel there's a strong orthodoxy one way or the other in the MLN community (but I certainly can be proven wrong - poll over the fold). There are a few separate questions to be answered: can / should we commit resources to investigating abuses from the executive branch? Who will bring charges, and what charges? And – even though it might not look this way for the After Downing Street folks (who see in the Downing Street Memo as the evidence needed to impeach, convict, and remove) – will those two questions line up to make for an impeachment trial of substance?
The last one is important – a lot of us were unhappy when no Senator joined in the motion to challenge electors in 2001 (following Bush v. Gore and the Florida debacle), and in 2004, while Boxer joined with Tubbs-Jones to make the challenge official, it's hardly an event that'll go down in the history books. The reason why is because it was one political event without an understood cultural meaning (in the way that we understand the meaning of an election, for example), with no preparation or organization to define a meaning, and with no real follow-up to place the event in a larger context. It became insignificant in the most basic sense of the word: it didn't signify anything.
My concern about impeachment-from-the-states, given that it's very unusual when considered against the backdrop of 200+ years of American politics, is that should it flop, it'll meet the same fate as the failure to challenge Ohio's Presidential Electors in 2004. If the action is part of a move towards challenging and diminishing executive authority in our government, then I think it could be the beginning of a number of very positive changes even if it fails, ultimately, to remove Bush or Cheney from office.
However, I think it's just as likely, if not more so, that the event of an impeachment resolution transmitted to the House by a state legislature (followed by that events' probable failure) will be used as a bludgeoning stick against "spineless Democrats." Working to lure progressives into a paper-thin movement that promises results without all the time, energy, and organization that's required to genuinely change the minds of the American public – for better or worse, the most famously stubborn population on the face of the earth – has all the appeal to me of doing another "not a dime's worth of difference" dance while President Tancredo is sworn into office.
I'm obviously of mixed opinions on the matter – but that's exactly why this kind of debate is interesting and exciting to me. If that's your cup of tea, swing by the Silver Star tomorrow at 7 to discuss impeachment with Dan DeWalt of VTImpeach.org. |
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