It's About A Failed Presidency, Stupid

The recently scrapped Senate bill requiring a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq was ridiculed by conservatives as an attempt by Congress to micro-manage the “war” in Iraq. But their scorn misses a much larger and more ominous point, eclipsing mere policy disputes.

How should America deal with a President who is incompetent, corrupt and holds the actions of his administration above the law?

Even Republicans are increasingly conceding that President Bush mismanaged the invasion of Iraq, often using the phrase “mistakes were made” to substitute for a more realistic, catastrophic and lamentable description.

But beyond Iraq, Bush has done deliberate and entirely avoidable harm to a broad range of important institutions and policies at home.

He turned governmental agencies and departments – Justice, Interior, Energy, Environmental Protection, etc. – into extensions of the Republican party, in some cases clearly violating the law.

He staffed those same institutions with unqualified cronies or with partisan members of the industries those institutions were supposed to regulate, resulting in tragedy ("Heck of a job, Brownie!").

He supported and sustained immoral policies such as torture and rendition that shattered our credibility in the world community and put our troops at risk.

He held no high official responsible for the outrageous abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, which further damaged our international standing.

He held none of his cabinet responsible for the illegal and disgraceful outing of a covert CIA officer despite clear supporting evidence.

He failed to respond adequately to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, and continues to fail to provide adequate, much less competent, support for the victims of that disaster.

He failed to respond effectively and continues to ignore the genocide in Darfur.

And so on.

When a President botches a war we shouldn’t trust that same person to clean up the mess. Yet we’ve been forced to wait almost five years for President Bush to come up with a plan to sort out what many now call the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation’s history.

Republicans acknowledge that “mistakes have been made” but they still can’t embrace what so many Americans have already concluded – that the real issue has little to do with military strategy and everything to do with our national response to a failed and catastrophic Presidency.

Do we have to wait until a President gets caught on tape covering up a robbery or lying about adultery before we can act to limit his power or remove him from office? The Constitution allows for impeachment when the President commits “high crimes and misdemeanors”. A misdemeanor, in modern usage, could mean a traffic violation or drunk and disorderly.

Certainly the failures and scandals of the Bush White House are more egregious than drunk and disorderly.

If the actions of President Bush and his cabinet aren't excellent and proper candidates for impeachment, much less outrage, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

- JT Compton

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