Worst-ever president needs no reminder

A couple weeks back, the Willamette Week ran an article about the flak that Earl Blumenauer (East Portland’s lovely Democratic Congressman in the U.S. House of Reps) has received from his constituents on his stance on impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney: That is, he doesn’t want to do it.

On Sept. 23, “Blumenauer sat silently as nearly 400 local activists and community members lashed out for 90 minutes on impeachment, the Iraq war and other issues.” Though, as the “Willy” Week pointed out, Blumenauer has consistently voted against the war (as well as the Patriot Act and its spawn), some Portlanders don’t feel it’s been enough.

I always thought the “impeach Bush” crowd was sort of on the fringe, but I guess I’ve had my head in the sand. A July poll from the American Research Group reported that 45 percent of American adults favored the beginning of impeachment proceedings against President Bush, with 46 percent opposing them. The same poll found even higher approval for impeaching Vice President Cheney.

The website www.impeachpac.org reports that 86 cities/towns/counties over the country have passed various impeachment resolutions. An MSNBC online poll asking, “Do you believe President Bush’s actions justify impeachment?” has received over 566,000 votes, 89 percent answering “yes.” (Woah!)

Everyone’s favorite underdog presidential candidate, Dennis Kucinich, introduced a House bill to impeach Cheney that is currently marinating in subcommittee. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn have endorsed an online petition solely to push MoveOn.org, an organization that has not been active in promoting impeachment, to start talking about it. That alone has received 2,300 electronic signatures.

So yeah, I guess we’re calling for Bush’s blood. Um, cool?

I understand that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are big, evil criminals. They led us into a war on false information to further their own interests, the blood of thousands are on their hands, they are a ruthless mix of evil and incompetent, and they probably kick puppies on the way home from the White House. Sure, there’s plenty of justification for putting them on trial, booting them out of office, and locking them up.

And yet, actually taking the steps to impeach them just seems… well… stupid. The impeachment process is long, arduous and costly, and we just don’t need to do it. There are so many problems in our country that deserve our attention right now, that impeaching a lame-duck president who’s going to be gone in a little over a year just doesn’t seem like it should be our highest priority at the moment. Nancy Pelosi bluntly said in an interview on “60 Minutes,” “It’s a waste of time.”

And it is. We need to be looking forward, not backwards. And that means it’s time to stop thinking “Bush lied, thousands died, OMG!” It’s time to stop agonizing over the fact that we were bamboozled into this war and this administration, and start thinking about how we’re going to fix it.

Maybe I’m just a small-town Mennonite, but I don’t understand how impeaching Bush and Cheney is going to make America a better place when they have little power and they’re going to be thrown out soon anyways. It’s not worth the immense amount of time and money. And yes, there’s the concept of justice and establishing a precedent to ensure future presidents don’t do the same. (Steve Novick, Democratic candidate for Oregon’s open U.S. Senate seat has called for impeachment under this reasoning.)

Yet being vindictive is not the most important thing at the moment. We’ve got other problems. This late in the game, impeachment would be more trouble than it’s worth.

And as far as establishing a precedent goes, a May 2006 poll of American voters ranked George W. Bush the worst of all presidents we’ve had since World War II, receiving twice as many votes as the second worst, Richard Nixon. His approval ratings hover around 34 percent. A poll in Britain voted Bush the second biggest threat to world peace after Osama bin Laden, beating out Kim Jong-II. Even the magazine The American Conservative, commenting on Bush’s out-of-control deficit spending, wrote, “If history gives Bush a nickname, it will be Deadbeat Dubya.”

The precedent has been established. We’ve learned the lesson. We don’t need impeachment to make history remember that Bush was a shitty president. Let’s elect someone better next November, clean up and move on.