Kevin Phillips (The Huffington Post): Time tor Recall Bush?

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Huffington Post
Dated Tuesday March 28

Time to Recall Bush?
By Kevin Phillips

Two years ago in American Dynasty, I suggested that George W. Bush, if re-elected, might well face impeachment in his second term as the debacle in Iraq deepened. This has come to pass, and not surprisingly because American presidents since World War Two -- Truman over Korea and Johnson and Nixon over Vietnam -- faced similar rumblings when wars went poorly or were clearly mismanaged.

Still, the talk did not become action, and even Nixon's 1974 impeachment did not extend to the Vietnam war. The odds, then, are that the talk of impeaching George W. Bush over mismanagement in Iraq or national security excesses at home won't go anywhere either. The Democrats in Congress are right to suspect that such a move could open a political version of Pandora's box.

Back in 1998, the GOP-led crusade to impeach Bill Clinton certainly did. The clumsiness of the GOP effort also wound up focusing attention on the moral hypocrisy of certain Republican leaders in the House of Representatives whose peccadilloes were on a par with Clinton's. It is all too easy to imagine a clumsy Democratic-led impeachment effort creating a backlash in which that party's own war and national security-related skills become a GOP target and wind up distracting the public from George W. Bush's own incompetence.

This raises another critical point. For all that opinion polls show that incompetence is the word voters most often associate with Bush, incompetence is not a high crime or misdemeanor of the sort generally considered grounds for impeachment.

Read more.

OK, I know Phillips isn't one of us. However, he is usually fair and always a good judge of the prevailing direction of the political winds.

[wryter2000]

1. Strange bedfellows

He appears to be appalled at modern "conservatism." His book Wealth and Democracy is a very important read. Unfortunately, it's a bit dense, but very, very good.

[Zen Democrat]

2. He's more "one of us" than "one of them".

He can't stand old man Bush, or the afflicted son. He's no longer a Republican, but a registered Independent.

[enough]

3. The title of Phillips' book on the Bush family --

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and Deceit in the House of Bush -- says a lot about what he thinks of the Bushes.

I'm reading his current book, American Theocracy, which is fascinating and hair-raising.



I would be happy to be part of an "us" that includes Kevin Phillips.

[kiraboo]

4. But I question the "backlash" he speaks of. It seems to me

that after impeaching Clinton, far from experiencing a backlash, the repukes went on take control of the government. Twice.

[salin]

5. A constitutional amendment for recall?

That would move us into an era of perpetual campaigns - any democratic candidate ever wins and the next day a recall campaign would be well funded and underway. Dangerous remedy.

[Demeter]

6. With the Constitutional Violations Bush Confessed to

we don't have to open "Pandora's Box" of the Iraq War. You can only hang a man once. Unfortunately.