Me either.
Mind you, I see no contradiction between a desire to avoid such a downward spiral and my belief that Rove should be impeached, but YMMV.
Criminal prosecution of Rove might be impossible if he’s going to argue all relevant evidence is shielded by executive privilege. Would that qualify?
Clinton was no public danger. I hope we can agree that striking against this Administration by all possible and lawful means would be best for the country.
Sooooo… impeachment with no relevant evidence is something to be proud of?
And don’t forget Scooter Libby. He was successfully prosecuted by the Feds. Let’s not put the cart before the horse: if Rove committed some criminal offense, he should first be arrested.
I would see no contradiction provided the impeachment were for something that was actually criminal. Otherwise, you’re pursuing a political agenda which will almost certainly lead to retaliation. The steps should be:
- Investigation.
- If criminal behavior found, request that Bush open an legal investigation.
- If that request is denied, then pursue impeachment.
Also, I think that if actual criminal behavior is involved, then an expectation that the Senate convicts is realistic. Otherwise, it is not.
All possible means? No.
I believe an EP claim would be much harder to support in connection with an impeachment proceeding than a criminal prosecution. Remember Nixon.
Libby was prosecuted because Ashcroft allowed for the appointment of a special counsel – a mistake this Admin will not repeat; they won’t even allow the DoJ to bring contempt-of-Congress indictments against recalcitrant witnesses.
I’ll first state I find nothing whatsoever about anything Rove has done with these briefings to be inappropriate. I wouldn’t support his impeachment on those grounds alone. Furthermore, his impeachment would be nothing more than a political witch hunt, and arguments about when the “other side” has engaged in such witch hunts isn’t a compelling justification for engaging in yet another witch hunt. They’re always stupid and bad for the country, and getting involved in them out of partisan political furor or because you feel a desire to engage in tit-for-tat because of perceived offenses from the other side of the aisle is what is actually inappropriate.
To the issue of impeachment itself, I would ask, “what’s the point?” So, you remove Rove from his post. To my knowledge, that is all that impeachment can do, remove you from office. What mechanism does the Congress have to prevent Bush from simply hiring Rove back? Doesn’t the President have more or less free reign to hire/fire whoever he wants to his staff? This is probably precisely the reason that the people who have been impeached in the past are specifically individuals that could not be fired (although in practice a cabinet officer serves at the pleasure of the President, and if the President asks for their resignation, he will almost always get it, he can’t actually fire a cabinet member who refuses to resign.) The Federal officials who can’t be “fired” summarily usually occupy important positions that well, need occupying for the government to function properly. If one of the members of the SCOTUS were convicted of a crime but not removed from office, it’d be very hard for them to properly serve the country from prison. But unless they resigned, even a criminal conviction, I don’t think, would instantly remove them, I think it takes impeachment to force them out of said office. Maybe I’m wrong, though.
That being said, you impeach Rove (and if you can prevent him from just being rehired to the same or similar office), what if Bush just uses him in exactly the same way he did before, but as an “unofficial adviser?” Presidents have had advisers without any actual position on their staff for centuries, and such a person could easily continue to do exactly the same things that Rove is currently doing on the President’s orders. I mean, Rove’s power comes because he has the ear of the President, technically when he went from being a “Senior Advisor” to “Deputy Chief of Staff” that was a promotion (if that was the order he was promoted in, can’t recall), but these various staff positions are only as important as the President allows them to be. Bush has in the past shown that unlike past Presidents who made the Chief of Staff a very powerful position, Bush has never done so in his administration (Card and later Bolton have been weak Chiefs of Staff) by contrast, Cheney has a lot of authority within the administration.
Actually maybe cabinet members can be fired directly by the President, I’m not sure the more I think about it. In any case, that’s mostly irrelevant to the points I was making.
You don’t think politicizing (in the partisan-electoral-strategy sense) the executive-branch departments is inappropriate?! Every POTUS takes his party’s electoral interests into account when setting policy, but doing it to this degree is uprecedented! It’s like he’s letting the RNC run the country!
Don’t forget the many thousands of much more obscure federal officials who can’t be fired because they have civil-service protection.
Some of them have been fighting the politicization, against overwhelming odds.
Cite?
Well, assuming Rove is currently impeachable, if they brought up articles against him then, could Rove be made into an un-impeachable citizen retroactive to the articles of impeachment?
Sure, if Bush fires him.
Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is Rove’s job description? If he is as I thought a political advisor, then why are the taxpayers paying his salary? If a president needs someone to render political advice, why wouldn’t he be on the RNC or DNC payroll, as the case may be? It seems illogical to me why all of us have to foot the bill for someone to try to advance one political party.
Under normal circumstances, I’d buy into these steps. But these circumstances aren’t normal. Even the most pro forma cooperation from this Administration cannot be expected.
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OK, as long as any nontrivial stonewalling and foot-dragging to delay the investigation causes Congress to move to impeachment.
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OK, as long as Congress sets a fairly near-term deadline for agreeing to and appointing a Special Prosecutor, with a move to impeachment if the deadline is missed.
Under those conditions, and with the expectation from the get-go that one or the other will be fulfilled, I’d be OK with those steps.
The problem is, even if we all agreed Rove is a bad guy and shouldn’t be working in government, impeachment doesn’t really do anything. Firing him doesn’t really do anything. Him resigning doesn’t really do anything.
If he remains to have the ear of the President, he needs no position in the White House to affect policy in precisely the manner he is doing at the moment.
Just look at Jackson and his “Kitchen Cabinet.” The President can meet with whoever he wants on a daily basis, they don’t have to work for him to give him advice or even to set policy.
If Rove has done something criminal, he should be charged criminally. That is the one thing that would probably seriously curtail his ability to impact policy, because he’d be in a prison. Even if he was allowed communication with the President it is doubtful even Bush would want to be perceived as taking advice from a guy sitting in a cell block.
By whom? The special prosecutor that Bush has appointed to look into Gonzales’ misdeeds?
The appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the Plame leak was, to be blunt, when Bush still had another election ahead. He still had to at least pretend to be reasonable then. He has nothing to gain, and lots to lose, from similar cooperation now.
I agree with everything but the last paragraph.
You went on and said other stuff, but this was pretty much enough to seal the deal.
Impeaching him would do something, just like impeaching Bush and Cheney would do something: It would drag everything into the light of day. That would be worthwhile, even if the Senate couldn’t muster the 2/3 needed to convict.
Senators and Representatives all have staff. Since these are political offices I assume many of the staffers have political duties.