Raising the "I" word

[erik_kosberg]

Speaking of deeply flawed polls...

[brian_igo]

realtraveller said

You all can chew on this all you want. As a practical political matter, with 64% approving the NSA searches, the "I" is a dead letter.

Let's ask this question again, this time including that the President ordered the taps without a warrant.

Americans are divided on whether President Bush acted legally when he authorized a secret program to wiretap suspected terrorists without court approval, a new poll finds.


49% of those surveyed said Mr. Bush has the constitutional power to intercept international communications without the approval of a federal judge.


50% said the wiretaps that Mr. Bush authorized have made the nation safer.


18% said the president's actions have put the country at greater risk.


51% said the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction, while 44 percent reported that they believe the country is on the right track.

Of the 49% who said the orders were constitutional, I wonder how many could identify what is said in Article II Sec. 3? I don't expect even 5% of Americans to know chapter and verse, but I wonder how many of the 49% knew the constitution orders that the president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"?

[brian_igo]

My favorite story of the week. (Wait, Abramoff was this week, too...Okay. Second favorite story. Unless the grand jury comes back on Rove.)

The so-called mainstream media has reacted to any hint of GWB being removed from office as beyond the pale. If you look closely you can see a producer pulling the string in Chris Matthews back everytime he says "No one with any credibility is suggesting that Bush be impeached." The string lets him save a few acorns for winter.

Anyway. Thanks to Greg Mitchell at Editor and Publisher we can see that this gravitas about removing a president from office is a recent phenomenon.

What did "I" do? On Dec. 21, I wrote a little news story for this site about the sudden appearance of the "I" word -- impeachment, that is -- in reputable publications. The outrage over revelations about President Bush's approval of spying on Americans without a warrant was then at its height, before subsiding to its current level of what-will-they-think-of-next cynicism.

We got a lot of negative mail about that article, even though we didn't take a position on the matter, but simply pointed out that the "I" word was now being uttered in some surprising places (Barron's magazine?). Certainly, it's no "slam dunk" -- to coin a phrase -- that the president should be impeached, and most Democrats don't even want it to happen, either because they think they can make hay in the November elections with Bush still in office, and/or they fear a short but perhaps brutal reign of our own King Richard I.

Still, it amazes me when people make fun of the very notion that a president under a dark cloud might be asked to leave office, or given a push, in light of the very recent experience involving one William Jefferson Clinton. This seems especially poignant, in light of President Clinton leaving office with an approval rating over 60%, while the current occupant of the White House sits at around 40%. Then there's the perennial debate over the relative demerits of fooling around with an intern vs. fooling an entire country into going to war based on false evidence (and anything else you'd care to add on top of that).

In any case, while still not taking a position on impeachment, I thought it would be interesting to look back at how the press reacted to the Clinton Crisis of 1998. Did newspaper editorials condemn Clinton for his screwing around, and lying about it, and leave it at that, or did they come out squarely for his exit from office?

What follows, from an Associated Press rundown on September 15, 1998, is a long list of newspapers that "called for President Clinton's resignation." AP added that some of those listed "did so before the release of Kenneth Starr's report on Sept. 11."

Indeed, the Philadelphia Inquirer responded to the coming of the Starr report this way: "Bill Clinton should resign. He should resign because his repeated, reckless deceits have dishonored his presidency beyond repair."

The Los Angeles Times pointed out: "The picture of Clinton that now emerges is that of a middle-aged man with a pathetic inability to control his sexual fancies."

The New York Times, on its Howell Raines-led editorial page, thundered that until the Starr turn, "no citizen ... could have grasped the completeness of President Clinton's mendacity or the magnitude of his recklessness." Yet a Washington Post poll that month showed that while a majority of Americans wanted Congress to censure Clinton, they did not want it to boot him out of office.

Here is that AP partial list of newspapers calling for Clinton to quit (other papers no doubt joined in later):

NATIONAL:
USA Today

ALABAMA:
The Mobile Register
Montgomery Advertiser

ARIZONA:
Tucson Citizen

CALIFORNIA:
San Jose Mercury News
The Orange County Register
The North (San Diego) County Times
The Record, Stockton

COLORADO:
The Denver Post

CONNECTICUT:
The Day of New London
Norwich Bulletin

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
The Washington Times

FLORIDA:
The Orlando Sentinel
The Tampa Tribune

GEORGIA:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Augusta Chronicle

ILLINOIS:
Chicago Tribune

INDIANA:
The Indianapolis Star
Chronicle-Tribune of Marion
South Bend Tribune
The Times of Northwest Indiana

IOWA:
The Des Moines Register

KANSAS:
The Topeka Capital-Journal

LOUISIANA:
The Times-Picayune of New Orleans
The News-Star, Monroe

MICHIGAN:
The Grand Rapids Press
Detroit Free Press

MINNESOTA:
Post-Bulletin of Rochester

MISSISSIPPI:
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Tupelo

MISSOURI:
Jefferson City News-Tribune

NEBRASKA:
Lincoln Journal Star

NEVADA:
Reno Gazette-Journal

NEW JERSEY
The Trentonian, Trenton

NEW MEXICO:
Albuquerque Journal
The Santa Fe New Mexican

NEW YORK:
Sunday Freeman of Kingston
Utica Observer-Dispatch

NORTH CAROLINA:
The Herald-Sun of Durham
Winston-Salem Journal

OHIO:
The Repository, Canton
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The Cincinnati Post

OKLAHOMA:
The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City
Tulsa World

OREGON:
Statesman Journal, Salem

PENNSYLVANIA:
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

SOUTH CAROLINA:
The State, Columbia

SOUTH DAKOTA:
Argus Leader, Sioux Falls

TEXAS:
San Antonio Express-News
El Paso Times

UTAH:
Standard-Examiner, Ogden
The Spectrum, St. George
The Salt Lake Tribune, Salt Lake City
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

VIRGINIA:
Daily Press of Newport News

WASHINGTON:
The Seattle Times

WISCONSIN:
The Post-Crescent, Appleton
The Journal Times, Racine

[poseidon]

The Denver Post is one of two major Denver newspapers, Brian. Of the two (the other being the Rocky Mountain News), it is by far the more liberal. They aren't exactly Bush fans.

[erik_kosberg]

So much for the Rasmussen poll showing 64% support...

[erik_kosberg]

"Two words: Dick Cheney."

[erik_kosberg]

Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican:

"The president says, 'I don't care.' He's not accountable anymore," Hagel says, measuring his words by the syllable and his syllables almost by the letter. "He's not accountable anymore, which isn't totally true. You can impeach him, and before this is over, you might see calls for his impeachment. I don't know. It depends how this goes."

Now if we can only get more Democrats thinking along those lines...

[erik_kosberg]

When a rightwing Moonie site like Human Events can report that a Republican pollster has found that 39% of respondents favored the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, maybe there's hope after all.