An amusing game is being played by Democrats and Republicans over whisperings of an impeachment of President Bush. Most Democrats are disavowing interest; the Republicans are darkly warning of it.
The reasons are obvious. The Democrats see any impeachment action now as a potentially losing distraction from their quest to win control of Congress in November. The Republicans see just the thought of it as a rallying point for their party faithful, and a way to keep playing the patriotism card.
The Democrats, convinced that they must offer positive alternatives to take advantage of Bush?s diminished popularity, are pledging an end to deficit spending through pay-as-you-go budgeting, along with health care and education reform.
They?re also promising, if they become the majority party in the House, to use the subpoena power to hold hearings on gas and other energy prices, on what they call the “culture of corruption” in Congress, and on the war in Iraq.
The Republicans are seizing on the last item, hoping to reduce the congressional elections to a referendum on a threatened impeachment of Bush despite the Democrats? disclaiming such a tactic.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on NBC News? “Meet the Press” last Sunday pointedly said: “Democrats are not about impeachment. Democrats are about bringing the country together… . We?d have hearings on the war, but I don?t see us going to a place of an impeachment or all of that.”
When host Tim Russert asked her: “Is impeachment off the table?” she replied: “Well, you never know where the facts take you … for any president, but that isn?t what we?re about.”
Russert then noted that the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, had already introduced, with 36 Democratic sponsors, a resolution calling for hearings into possible impeachment. With a Democratic majority in the House, Conyers would be chairman of the committee likely to hold such hearings.
That was more than enough for the Republican National Committee on its Web site to pounce. Its headline blared: “Democrats? Choice to be Speaker of the House Pelosi Focuses on Investigations, Impeachment and Higher Taxes on Americans.”
There?s little doubt that the Democratic leaders in Congress would rejoice with the impeachment of the Republican president. But they learned in the 2004 presidential campaign that trying to make that election a referendum on his role in starting and conducting the war in Iraq was not enough to defeat him.
To be sure, Bush?s popularity, and public support for the war, were higher than now, and he himself will not be on the ballot in November. But the Democrats prefer not to personalize the off-year elections with any impeachment push. They are aware that the recent much milder bid by Sen. Russ Feingold to censure the president over domestic surveillance without court order got nowhere.
It?s easy to foresee how the Republicans would respond to impeachment of Bush as an overt element in the Democrats? bid to take over the House. They would cast it not only as unpatriotic in time of war but also as payback for their own impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998.
It is similarly easy to see why the Democrats want to project a broader, less personalized agenda for their party in the November elections. Certainly, the Democrats will raise the track record of George W. Bush on a range of issues from the war and the growing federal deficit to the botching of the Katrina recovery. But they recognize that they also need to tell the voters how life will get better if they do take control of the House and/or Senate.
As Pelosi has said, no one can say where investigations of the war by a Democratic majority with subpoena power could lead. In the Watergate affair, the committee chaired by Democratic Sen. Sam Ervin led to revelations that convinced even Republicans that President Richard Nixon had to resign.
While polls show most Americans now say the Iraq war was a mistake, impeachment of Bush is little more than partisan wishful thinking so far. The Democrats know what they?re doing in looking elsewhere for ways to win in November.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
