I'm not terribly happy to see impeachment returning to the national conversation. It is, I think, a mind-boggingly bad idea. A few reasons:
• Fine, impeach. And then what? Hail to the Cheney? And Cheney gets to pick an heir for 2008, unifying the Republican Party around a fresh-faced, much-hyped successor? Why do we want that?
• Impeachment proceedings aren't always good politics. We on the left make a lot of noise about Newt's Wild and Crazy Prosecutorial Adventure, but we don't always mention the ass-kicking his party received in 1998, the one that led to his retirement from Congress. Proving bad faith on Bush's part is going to be mighty hard without the sort of smoking gun that proves he was deploying the NSA against personal enemies. So unless anyone knows where to find that enemy list...
• It's bad for the republic if impeachment becomes a routine feature of second-terms. Yes, I know that Democrats shouldn't be limited merely because the Republican Class of 1994 proved a crop of witch-hunting demagogues, but sometimes, fair or not, someone needs to play the adult. In this case, it's us.
Impeachment may be the sexiest and most gratifying of legal remedies for overstepping executives, but more attention, I think, should be paid to censure. It's a moderate response that codifies presidential wrongdoing and locks in perceptions of illegality. It short-circuits partisan defenses and rallying points that would refocus attention on the politics rather than the substance of the crime. And it strikes me as the most likely way to handicap Bush's second term and create favorable electoral results for Democrats, the only two outcomes actually able to constrain the executive branch.
