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By Josh Marshall
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Posted: 07/27/07 05:14 PM [ET] |
I’ve always been against the movement to impeach President Bush. It’s not that I don’t think the president hasn’t done plenty to merit removal from office. I do. My reasons are practical. More minor reasons include the fact that it’s late in the president’s term and that I think impeachment itself is toxic to our political system — though it can be less toxic than the high officials thrown from office. My key reason, though, is that Congress at present can’t even get to the relatively low threshold of votes required to force the president’s hand on Iraq. Coming out for impeachment under present circumstances is like being so frustrated that you can’t crawl that you come out for walking. It seems to elevate psychic satisfactions above progress on changing a series of policies that are doing daily and vast damage to our country. Find me 17 Republican senators who are going to convict President Bush in a Senate trial, and maybe we’ll talk.
On balance, this is still my position. But in recent days, for the first time, I’ve seen new facts that make me wonder whether the calculus has changed. Or to put it another way, they’ve made me question whether my position is still justifiable in the face of what’s happening in front of our eyes.
Most of those facts I’m referring to stem from the ongoing Gonzales controversy and the various running battles over executive privilege. In fact, one exchange in particular between Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) at Tuesday’s Senate hearing stands out in my mind.
This was the exchange in which Gonzales simply refused to answer one of Schumer’s questions — didn’t say he didn’t remember, didn’t invoke a privilege, just said no. Not going to discuss that with you. Move on to the next question.
It’s not that this one incident is a matter of such consequence in and of itself — though I would say it’s pretty consequential.
But it captures pretty fully and in one small nugget the terrain the White House is now dragging us onto.
Testifying before Congress is like testifying in a court of law. The questions aren’t voluntary. You have to answer every one.
You can invoke a privilege and let the court decide whether the argument has merit. But no one can simply decline to answer a question.
Though other events in recent months and years have had graver consequences in themselves, I’m not sure I’ve seen a more open, casual or brazen display of the attitude that the body of rules on which our whole system is built just doesn’t apply to this White House.
I think we are now moving into a situation where the White House, on various fronts, is openly ignoring the Constitution, acting as though not just the law but the Constitution itself, which is the fundamental law from which all the statutes gain their force and legitimacy, doesn’t apply to them. As Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) noted in the Tuesday hearing, the White House’s evolving position on privilege and contempt sets the White House up as a virtual law unto itself.
If that is allowed to continue, the defiance will congeal into precedent. And the whole structure of our system of government will be permanently changed.
Whether because of prudence and pragmatism or mere intellectual inertia, I still have the same opinion on the big question: impeachment. I think it’s a distraction from more important priorities, like making the president start pulling us back from the abyss in Iraq. But I think we’re moving onto dangerous ground right now, more so than some of us realize.
And I’m less sure now, under these circumstances, that operating by rules of “normal politics” is justifiable or absolves us of our duty to our country.
Marshall is editor of talkingpointsmemo.com . His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail:
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