Impeach Now or Impeach Later

Nancy Pelosi seems perfectly happy to carry over unlawful presidential powers into a likely democratic presidency. But taking impeachment off the table now, for whatever reason, only heightens the constitutional crisis, it doesn‘t avoid it. If the issue of unchecked presidential power is not resolved now, then impeachment is back on the table with a vengeance in 2009.

Pelosi’s actions raise the prospect of having to censure or impeach, for the salvation of the republic, a democratic president for exercising the same unconstitutional powers that have earned Bush impeachment. And that’s a very real prospect. This is one of the scariest sentences I’ve read in the recent news:

“If elected president in 2008, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton would consider giving up some of the executive powers President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have assumed since taking office.”

I don’t want another president who thinks following the dictates of the constitution and the law is merely something to “consider.”

Because a Republican minority has proved stronger than a Democratic majority, what Pelosi has taken off the table, the Republican minority leader will soon have back on it if a Democratic president exercises the same exaggerated powers Bush now claims for the executive. Can’t you hear a sanctimonious Lindsey Graham now, dusting off Clinton impeachment oldies like this:

“The president of the United States sets atop of the legal pyramid. If there’s reasonable doubt about his ability to faithfully execute the laws of the land, our future would be better off if that individual is removed.”

Many, I include myself, will be put in the terrible position of having to endorse an action, the justified impeachment of a President exercising unconstitutional powers, that is driven by the same calculated and thoroughly hypocritical outrage Republicans mustered for Clinton. “Defenders of the constitution” like Lindsey Graham will crawl out from under every rock, and I will have to hold my nose and side with them.

What is the alternative? It’s simple: Let the President who claimed unlawful powers be the one from whom they are stripped. Is there something short of impeachment that can check burgeoning executive power? I don’t see it. So impeach now or impeach later. Impeach the President who deserves it, or be forced to support the justified impeachment of a successor to protect the Constitution from the same subversion.