Fw: Trial by Constitution

----- Original Message -----

From: Arturo Adame

To: Joanie ; Richard Foy

Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 7:55 PM

Subject: Trial by Constitution

I found this article's analysis to be quite unique in its approach and rationale for impeachment of Bush.  It assumes that most people don't want to admit that they made a mistake in supporting Bush (or electing him in the first place), but that they are comfortable in making him responsible for the mess he created with the powers granted him, thus the term "abuse of power."

 

 

 

Trial by Constitution
    By Stirling Newberry
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Saturday 06 August 2005

    Thirty-one years ago, on August 8th, Richard Nixon addressed the American public for the 37th time from the Oval Office. His message was that he was resigning the Presidency "effective noon tomorrow." It was the fall of a man who had risen in public life under a cloud, and had participated in five national elections on a major party ticket, more than any one else except Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For many who had been opposed to him from the beginning, it was a great weight lifted from the country. GB Trudeau had a metaphorical brick wall removed from in front of Doonesbury's White House.

    In his speech Nixon acknowledged what had come to be recognized as the reality of impeachment: that it was a constitutional and deliberative process, and, at its root, a means for the American people to determine the destiny of the Executive. There have been four serious attempts at impeachment: Clinton and Nixon are both within living memory, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson has entered into legend, both because of its metaphorical significance, and because the outcome was so decisive for politics in America. But the fourth serious attempt is almost forgotten, though it was the model for the Andrew Johnson impeachment: John Tyler. ...

   ... In the four major attempts at impeachment, the conflict has been over the mandate of an Executive against the mandate of Congress. Each one was the result of a "broken election," where conflicting mandates were created by the electorate. Under the Constitution the President or the Congress can be the center of power, but it is not possible for both to be dominant at the same time. There have been nine attempts at impeachment all together; in each case a Congress attempted to hold an Executive who had, rightly or wrongly, lost the faith of the electorate.

    Looking at those who have faced such charges, one thing unifies all of them: they were all headstrong Presidents who collided with legislatures that had a very different vision of the public good and the public trust.

    In his book Warrior King, John Bonifaz lays out what he feels to be a legal case for impeachment of the President. His case argues for particular constitutional boundaries to Presidential action. Like any legal case, it is phrased in ringing language and argues for deep principles. It argues eloquently and passionately for a Presidency that must report truthfully to the public, and a Congress that has limits on what it can delegate to the Executive. ...

 

  ...  There are those who would argue that unless and until the Democrats win the elections in 2006, there is no impeachment process. However, the reality is that the movement toward impeachment has already begun, because it is not impeachment which is the objective: the bar to actual removal of the Executive is so high that either impeachment of the President is dead letter, or it has another meaning.

    That other meaning has been a trial by Constitution over the limits of executive power. John Bonifaz's case is not a question of whether the law was broken, but whether there is any law all. Impeachment has been the recourse of lawless Congress, and it has been the tool to restrain a lawless Executive. But which is which is only decided in retrospect. By testing the limits of Constitutional procedure, and forcing the public to face whether an Executive has exceed the bounds of the power granted him by the public, it settles the matter. We hold impeachments, in short, for the same reason we hold Superbowls: because there is no other way.

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    One way to tell that the movement toward impeachment has already begun, and that it has members in the most unlikely of places, and indeed members who will publicly deny they are moving in that direction at all, is the introduction of the language of Constitutional conflict. The current slogan of the Democrats in both House and Senate is that the Republicans are guilty of "Abuse of Power." It is a phrase that should be familiar: it is the title of Article II of the Impeachment Articles passed by the House Judiciary Committee on July 29th, 1974.

    Frank Lautenberg has also brought forth the language of impeachment: by using the word "Treason" to describe the breach of national security by Karl Rove. The word "impeachment" has, itself, surfaced in connection with Rove, floated by John Conyers, who wrote the introduction for John Bonifaz's book. The language of impeachment has not just surfaced in rhetorical ways, but in an even more portentious place: in the proceedings of the Grand Jury that has been empanelled to investigate whether crimes were committed in connection with the outing of Valerie Wilson a.k.a. Valerie Plame.

    It should be remembered that one of the killing blows against Nixon was that he was named as an "unindicted co-conspirator." It was not Congress that began the real inquiry into Nixon, it was the judicial process. Just as revelations discovered by a grand jury in 1973 and 1974 placed the scandal "inside the White House," so too have revelations in 2004 and 2005 placed the scandal inside the Oval Office: with Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, two top aids to the President and Vice President respectively.

    This is a stark change from standing "shoulder to shoulder" with the President. It should be noted that the Congressional leaders who said this, Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt, along with DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, are now all in private life. The new leadership is both more liberal and more aggressive than the old. The public has also soured on Iraq, and on George Bush. No President has ever been less popular with an economy that is not in recession. One has to look back to the pit of 1982 to find Reagan's numbers as bad for as long as George Bush's are now.

    But the most important sign of the movement toward impeachment is a growing demand for answers. Once upon a time, Dick Cheney could have snarled at the cameras that the public had "moved on," now he cannot. Inquiry is the seed of impeachment, and resolutions of inquiry are being pressed on the floor of the House. It is true that these resolutions will be tabled, and left for dead. But they then give the Democrats something to run on: a demand for answers. The results from Ohio's Second District show that while the public may not accept a case for impeachment based entirely on how we went to war in Iraq, it is more than willing to listen to charges that Iraq has been mishandled.

    This is an important, if subtle, distinction. To make a case solely on how America went to war is to ask the public to face its own complicity in the rush to Iraq. However, to make a case that Bush has abused the trust that War creates, that lies were told before, during and after the invasion, allows the public to set aside, rather than take, responsibility for Iraq. They can tell themselves that Bush mishandled the trust they gave him, and that he lied to cover up his failures. And it is almost always the cover up, more than the crime, that angers people.

    Impeachment, remember, is when a Congress attempts to hold a stiff-necked Executive to account. The very trait that makes a stubborn man capable of playing a weak hand against an opposition Congress is the trait that becomes a liability once inquiry and impeachment are invoked. The march to impeachment gives a President chance after chance to prove that he neither learns, nor listens. With each denial, with each attempt to change the subject, with each imperious declaration that he is right, the Executive builds the case against himself in the public mind. He is on the stand in a trial, each and every day, and is, in the end, the most devastating witness against himself.

    In this particular moment, the struggle that ends with regime change in America has already begun. One of the possible roads to the climax of that struggle lies through inquiry, and if necessary, invocation of power of impeachment, which, like the power to declare war, is in the hands of the Congress alone.