Evil will always win because good is dumb

or why I don’t understand the case for impeachment.

I read a little bit about impeachment today.

A large number of liberals seem to think that would be totally awesome if we impeached the president. For my life, I cannot understand why. Is the desire to impeach simply a manifestation of rage at the president? Are we seeing a man whose personality and policy we hate, and feeling that the best way to deal with that hate is to punish him the same way conservatives tried to punish Clinton. This is the only answer I can see. I realize that there may be a decent case for impeaching the president, but I don’t see where it would take us.

The big negatives you get with any impeachment are that the process distracts the government’s attention from the business of making policy. The impeachment process can tie up the legislative branch (and the media) for months, and I would argue that is an extremely divisive thing to implement, that it can be extremely damaging to the country’s morale and, in this case, could only increase partisan tensions and decrease citizens’ faith in government. I realize that one could easily be of the “so what” opinion. You could say, “So what, we should impeach anyway, because our morale is already low, our partisan tension is already high, our government isn’t legislating well, our case is strong, and Bush deserves it.” Where I’m confused at this point is, what do you do now that Cheney’s the President? Are we any better off? I would argue no.

So, you decide to impeach them both. This is harder to accomplish. We waste more time and create more divisiveness. Let’s assume it works out. According to the 25th amendment, Hastert’s next, or, if he resigns because of his role in the Mark Foley scandal, someone else from the republican leadership. If the post happens to be vacant, we get Ted Stevens. I see us as no better off.

Of course, impeachment probably wouldn’t happen unless the Democrats succeed in taking control of the Senate. If that happens and we impeach, we still need control of the House to get a Democratic president out of this. Let’s assume that we overcome the very low probability of winning the whole legislature and convicting both Bush and Cheney, At this point, opponents of impeachment can easily paint it as a Democratic ploy made for the purpose of getting a Democratic president outside of the electoral process, and you have a lot of people who are angry at the party coming into the 2008 election. I think, in any eventuality, impeachment is a bad strategy because it assuages our short-term angst at the expense of long-term prosperity, and thus, evil wins because good is dumb. If we don’t impeach, we have the chance to set the Democratic party up as the principle-driven foil to the corrupt, inept Republicans and, if current trends continue, that works in our long-term favor.