Mac-Coleman

15 May 2013 –

The President is in political trouble.  There even are mumblings of impeachment.  If he does not resolve today’s big three scandals with aggressive action, the House of Representatives may indeed start impeachments proceedings by next year.  There are two views of the effectiveness of impeachment.  Pragmatists say that the House would accomplish little by impeaching the President for his involvement in the current scandals; the Senate would never convict him.  Altruists contend that impeachment without the conviction still would be valuable because it would force the President to confront his bad acts.  Later generations, altruists say, will need these facts to accurately assess history.     

I remember President Nixon in 1973-74.  The House of Representatives was drawing up articles of impeachment based on the President’s misuse of the IRS to attack his political enemies and on his complicity in the bungled break-in of Democrat Party offices in the Watergate Apartments.  Why did Nixon, a renown political survivor, resign instead of fight through the process?  It wasn’t simply because he was guilty.  It was because Republican leaders finally said that they would not support him in the House’s impending impeachment and, importantly, in the Senate’s trial to convict.  Nixon knew his political life was over.  Initiating impeachment proceedings forced President Nixon to resign because his party supported what was right.       

The House, on the other hand, impeached President Clinton on 19 December 1998, on two charges: perjury—lying under oath while being questioned by federal agents about his sexual relations with White House aide, Monica Lewinsky—and obstruction of justice.   President Clinton survived the trial in the Senate, even with fifty of fifty-five Republicans in the Senate voting for conviction, because NO Democrat voted for his conviction.  President Clinton’s Democrat confederates stolidly held that his acts did not “rise to the level of impeachable offenses.”  President Clinton lost his law license in his home state of Arkansas, but not his key to the Oval Office. 

Steady party support for a beleaguered president is required in our era of divided government.  If the President has it, he survives the impeachment process.  If he doesn’t, he is gone.  In President Obama’s case, Democrat Party support is holding firm.  But, as in President Nixon’s case, that support can erode during the long hot summer. 

The President faces three scandals of political importance: the Benghazi cover-up; the IRS’s deliberate intimidation of conservative political groups; and, the Justice Department’s flagrant abuse of the Associated Press’s First Amendment’s rights.  I start with the last one.   

The President could make this Justice Department scandal meaningless to all Democrats and a temporary success to some Republicans.  He could tell Attorney General Eric Holder to resign and then to appoint a conservative Democrat or a moderate-to-liberal Republican to “refocus” the Justice Department.  Then, no matter what came of the investigations, scrupulously reported on by the vengeful press, there probably would be little pressure to implicate the President in any illegal decision-making.   Political case closed. 

President Obama has a bigger problem with the misdirection of the IRS’s power.  This worries Democrat politicians because the IRS scares the average Democrat voter more than any other function in government.  Democrat politicians could lose significant support in future elections by not treating this scandal as something that “rises to the level” of a serious offense.  The President could still resolve this scandal.  He could direct the IRS commissioner, Steven Miller, to apologize publically for the abuse and to immediately “refocus” the agency.  The President could then assure the American people that IRS rules will be followed scrupulously for all Americans.  Democrat politicians would thus be appeased, and life would go on.

“Benghazi” is a serious threat to President Obama’s tenure because the President has little control over what has become a determined investigative process.  Eventually, the most despicable facts will be brought to light about why Americans were killed on 11 September 2012.  The worst will be when America finally knows the real reason for the cover-up: The President wanted Ambassador Stevens in Benghazi for something he wanted nobody to know about.  To cover up this when things went awry, he hung the Ambassador out to die and went to bed early.  When that becomes known, no Democrat anywhere will risk political suicide by voting against impeachment and conviction.  This game will be long and painful.  The pragmatists will disappear.  The rest of us will feel little joy in the eventual verdict.