Still, he was eventually pressured into resigning in disgrace. He should have been impeached.
And that is the excat reason it won’t happen.
Impeachment does not have to be about criminal activities. It can be for anything. It can be purely political.
Let me rephrase it: Nixon wasn’t impeached.
Bush’s people, yes. The question is, how high can the trail be followed, and where? And how much can the Party withstand before the metaphoric revolver with one bullet is left on Bush’ desk, where he has to pull a Nixon or be impeached?
It’s not a question of law… or even politics, exactly. It’s a question of dignity, lack thereof, humanity, lack thereof, and internal Republican Party issues and personal relationships I am not able to judge.
But the way things are going, it’s going to be damn dangerously close for Shrub.
Got it. Was NOT. At any rate, he did resign.
Clinton didn’t have W’s “little black dress” to pull on for every occasion: 9/11. Nor an ongoing war to dull the opposition with accusations of aiding the enemy whenever somebody tries to argue for civil rights. Not to mention not having a House majority from his party.
I hope I’m proven wrong, but impeachment is not even going to be remotely close to happening. The only possible effect will be a general loss of political clout of his party, which might hurt the next Republican nominee. But I wouldn’t even bet on that. 9/11! 9/11! We’re at war! 9/11!
It would take a real political bombshell, and a revolt in Congress. It would have to be so obvious, so blatant that nobody can pretend they were unaware. We may be headed that way. It would go at least as high as Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Cheney. It should probably go all the way to Bush, since he allowed it all to happen and helped it happen, or at the least, didn’t stop it. Even if he were to skate out completely, it still leaves ugly questions such as what did he know and what didn’t he know. If he really didn’t know or didn’t care, then he is either grossly incompetent or worse. As any cop can tell you, ignorance of the law is no excuse. I think he knew all along. I think he thought he had his own ass covered. If anything is his undoing, it will be his own “aloofness” and arrogance. You can’t give your staffers or VP free reign and then avoid the responsibility for what you let them do. You are still responsible in the end.
You know, this is correct in detail and wrong in essence. He resigned at a point when articles of impeachment had been overwhelmingly (I think unanimously) voted out of committee to the House floor, and were on the table of the House with high expectation of passage.
It’s kind of like saying that “no Prime Minister of the U.K. has ever been removed from office by losing a vote of confidence or an election.” It’s completely true in fact, but overlooks the detail that they always resign instead of being dismissed.
For the purposes of discussing precedent about a president being removed from office by the impeachment process, the Nixon precedent qualifies. In fact, my analogy is almost perfectly precise: he resigned first. He would inevitably have been impeached had he not. (That’s not drawing a conclusion about what the Senate would have done at trial, just the actual act of impeachment by the House itself.)
And, indeed, Poly, what my comment about the revolver with one bullet was alluding to.
In that case, the officer would be cashiered or dead, and he would rather be dead. In this, resignation or impeachment… and it is infinitely more preferable to resign.
Someone stated that Nixon was impeached. I corrected it. I don’t understand how that’s wrong in essence. There is no underlying truth to the statement that Nixon was impeached, since he wasn’t. And since it’s a commonly held misconception, it’s appropriate to correct it when that statement is posted on this board.
I really enjoyed Bush’s Saturday address, today, in which he fumed eloquently that it was illegal for someone to reveal that he was acting illegally.
Would you send a man to jail even though you can’t point to a law that he’s broken?
Depends on the man, the offense, and the circumstances. If an alien ambassador came down to give us the cure for all diseases, and Trent Reznor shot him, and then pointed out there was no law against shooting aliens, I’d pretty much want him in jail anyhow. Regardless of if it was legal or not.
Of course, he might not go to jail, as there was no law against shooting aliens, but I’d want him there.
John, would it be more true to say your comment was accurate but incomplete, as resigning per a pending impeachment does have a different cast on it than random resignation?
How long would he be in for? How would we decide?
I guess you’re right. Ignoring the law, and doing what you believe needs to be done, really is appropriate. I agree.
That was me.
Are you saying that we shouldn’t even investigate? I pointed to a “few” laws down in the pit, which you are still ignoring. Shall I post them here?
I came up with one too. May I suggest a new thread, specifically to discuss whether there are grounds to impeach Mr. Bush, with the object of examining his conduct in the light of existing legislation? Most “Impeach Bush” threads so far have been long on rhetoric and short on analysis; I’d love to see that addressed.
Let’s put it this way: the impeachment process was far enough along , prior to the release of the June 23, 1972 “smoking gun” tape, that his impeachment was an inevitability. The two main articles of impeachment had passed the Judiciary Committee (21 Dems, 17 GOP) by 27-11 and 28-10 margins. After the “smoking gun” tape was made public, the Committee convened for a vote (straw poll or official revote, I don’t know) and indicated that they were unanimously in favor of the obstruction-of-justice article. Two days later, Nixon resigned.
It’s absolutely true that the House did not vote on the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. But in comparing prior instances of Presidential impeachment, it completely makes no sense whatever to exclude the Nixon impeachment process in the discussion. And people are going to refer to it as the Nixon impeachment, because it’s too much of a nuisance to spell it out each time.
Whether it’s a nitpick or not depends on the question. If you’ve bet somebody $100 over the number of U.S. Presidents that have been impeached, it’s not a nitpick at all. But if we’re comparing Presidential impeachments, and discussing which of them have been based on serious charges, and how many of them were simply political attempts to hound an opponent from office, then Nixon belongs in there as an example of the former, and excluding him is a nitpick.
As far as I’m concerned, he deliberately broke the law, and by his own words, intends to keep doing so. If that isn’t grounds for investigation, I don’t know what is. I’d rather he resign and save the rest of the country the hassle.
But I never said it was inapropriate to look at the Nixon presidency when discussing impeachment. I corrected a factual error in SteveG1’s post-- nothing more, nothing less.