Give Chuck Hagel his way, and he’d know what to do with the politicians another senator wrote about a half century ago, men who stood up against public opinion.
Kick them out of office. Get rid of anyone so bold as to find a place between the covers of John F. Kennedy’s book, “Profiles of Courage.”
If you doubt the Nebraska Republican capable of feeling contempt for the act of resisting public pressure for the sake of a principle, take note of what he has been saying.
“Any president who says ‘I don’t care’ or ‘I will not respond to what the people of this country are saying about Iraq or anything else’ or ‘I don’t care what the Congress does, I am going to proceed’ — if a president believes that, then there are … ways to deal with that,” Hagel is widely quoted as having said on ABC.
The issue is Bush’s objections to picking a date for the United States to withdraw the military from Iraq. If he does not back down, Hagel has indubitably, brazenly, shockingly said, Congress can impeach and convict him.
“You can impeach him,” Hagel said in an interview with Esquire magazine, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment.” Bush, he says, “has lost the confidence of the American people in his war effort,” adding, “This is not a monarchy. There are ways to deal with it. And I would hope the president understands that.”
No, this is not a monarchy. It is a constitutional republic. And what the Constitution says about impeachment is not a matter of guesswork — the requirement is that there be a demonstration of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” I wish Hagel would understand that, and some other things, as well.
He ought to get it that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces with the power of battlefield command, and he ought to get it that while the different branches of government have carefully delineated means of checking each other, no branch can simply disband another because it or a majority of the public sees things differently.
He ought to get it that while the Constitution gives Americans a system of self-governance, it is chock-full of safeguards against runaway public passions. Not the least of them is a bicameral legislature in which the Senate is supposed to be a more cautious force than the House, often hesitating (like the president) when the polls, loud commentary and the latest election results scream for immediate action.
And he ought to get it that President Bush’s stance on the war is not some ploy intended to win plaudits. This man who has set records for a refusal to exercise his veto power is now standing up to Congress despite a nation largely turned against him. The reason is that he agrees with the experts who think the congressional prescription would give us a multiheaded disaster. Call that stubborn if you like. A better word is courageous.
Hagel is a Vietnam combat veteran who thinks the Iraq war was unjustified and has been incompetently managed. He is angry about that and, understandably, about war advocates who seem to view the loss of American lives there as “an abstraction.”
He himself has talked about the need of senators to act courageously, saying they should have sold shoes if they wanted secure jobs. But in even suggesting that a way to cope with a disagreeing president is to impeach him, he is letting his anger override a basic premise of our system, not to mention reflective judgment and common sense.
Maybe he is the one who should sell shoes.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He may be reached at [email protected]
