The case for impeaching Bush and Cheney

In my column last week, I used a naughty word, the I-word: Impeachment.

Mentioning impeachment in the company of the Republican faithful engenders the kind of reception O.J. Simpson would get at a domestic violence seminar. It matters not that George W. Bush and his dark-side sidekick Dick Cheney seem determined to drive the GOP political machine off a cliff.

Even if Bush and Cheney were caught on videotape having beers with Osama bin Laden, Senate Republicans would never vote to remove them, because that would put Democrat Nancy Pelosi in the White House.

But what if it didn't? What if impeaching Bush and Cheney led to Condoleezza Rice taking over as president? More on that later.

Bruce Fein is a Republican constitutional scholar who served in the Reagan administration and was involved in the drafting of articles of impeachment against Bill Clinton. With conservative credentials like this, it might be surprising that Fein would think that the case for impeachment against Bush and Cheney is not only stronger, but more in need of being prosecuted, to protect and restore the Constitution.

On a recent episode of "Bill Moyers's Journal," Fein and journalist John Nichols laid out a laundry list of impeachable offenses committed by Bush and Cheney: illegal spying on Americans' phone calls and e-mails, holding suspects in secret prisons without charges or lawyers, torture, using signing statements to alter laws passed by Congress, blocking congressional investigations of executive-branch wrongdoing, lying about the reasons for war in Iraq, etc. They are by far the most damning charges ever assembled against a president in American history.

Fein's rationale for impeachment is that the Constitution must be protected from people like Bush and Cheney who try to usurp powers not intended by the framers. Impeachment is one of the main tools within the Constitution to balance the powers of the president and ensure he does not become a virtual king. Impeachment isn't about removing the president, it's about removing the precedent, so that these powers are not abused by future occupants of the White House.

But if at least 16 Republican senators don't vote to impeach, what's the point? They will not cast a vote that will hand over control of the White House to the other party, no matter how much damage is being done. It would seem too much like a coup.

To restore the Constitution from lasting harm, someone will have to stand up and commit a selfless act for the benefit of the country, to erase politics from this task.

And I can only think of one way that could happen.

The law says that the speaker of the house is the next in line to be president, should the president and vice president be removed. But it doesn't say that the speaker has to accept the job.

The only possible way that Bush and Cheney could be impeached would be for Speaker Pelosi and president pro tem of the Senate, Robert Byrd (fourth in the line of succession), to commit in writing that, should enough Republican senators vote for impeachment, that they would not accept the office of president, thus letting it fall to the fifth person in the line of succession.

That would make Condi Rice president.

Think about that for a minute.

Moderate Republicans could get rid of the anchor effect Bush and Cheney are having on their futures. The fact that Rice would become the first woman and African American president would upstage Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. And a Rice presidency might distract people from what has happened these last six-and-a-half years.

The Democrats have talked a lot about standing up for the Constitution. Now is the time for them to put up or shut up. Seeing the momentum flowing to their side, they seem like they would rather play politics than do what the Constitution needs them to do.

The thought of having a Democratic president and Congress - building upon the precedent of Bush's extra-legal power grab - should scare Republicans. Heck, it scares me. After seeing what Bush, the compassionate conservative with the humble foreign policy, has done, do you really want to trust anyone with that kind of unchecked power?

This is why we have checks and balances built into the Constitution. But they only work if the people charged with defending the Constitution actually do some defending.

• Kirk Caraway is editor of http://nevadapolitics.com and also writes a blog on national issues at http://kirkcaraway.com.