Most mainstream legal scholars, including many who have been deeply critical of the Bush administration, would disagree that most of these alleged offenses fit the "high crimes and misdemeanors" requirement set out in the Constitution for impeachment. But on wiretapping in particular, some allow that there is an argument to be made.
"It's an allegation of serious criminal misconduct arising out of the exercise of the power of the presidency," says Mark Tushnet, a professor at Harvard Law School. "If it turns out that the President was authorizing illegal activity, it's comparable to Nixon."
For Democratic strategists, though, legal arguments are beside the point. Their case against pursuing impeachment is straightforwardly political. While every poll shows deep dissatisfaction with Bush and some show a conditional support for impeachment, even registered Democrats don't tend to list impeachment among their top priorities.
Pursuing impeachment today, Democratic leaders argue, would galvanize a Republican Party that's currently quite discouraged with Bush.
"In an ironic way it does George Bush a favor," says Rep. Barney Frank, Democrat from Newton. "He is losing the national debate on most issues, he is losing support among Republicans, and impeachment would almost certainly allow him to rally lots of Republicans."
It would also, they argue, put an end to any hope of passing significant legislation in the remaining year and a half of the current Congress. Congressional politics, says Ruy Teixeira, a political analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress, "is a zero-sum game: the resources and energy you put into trying to impeach Bush don't go into other things."
That legislative sclerosis, Frank argues, would only be worsened by the inevitable sharpening of partisan lines that impeachment would create. "The single most important thing for Congress to do is to get us out of Iraq," says Frank. "And especially in the Senate, that can't be done without Republican votes."
For impeachment proponents like Carpenter and Swanson -- who are optimistic that their cause will find broad support in the coming months -- gridlock would be a small price to pay to restore the Constitution's balance of powers. But they also dispute the zero-sum argument. Again, they look to Nixon.
"The overwhelming pressure of impeachment forced Nixon to back off, to not veto bills," says Swanson. "It put Nixon on the defensive."
According to Swanson, the impending threat of impeachment allowed the Democratic-controlled Congress to create the Endangered Species Act, to raise the minimum wage, and cut off funding for the Vietnam War.
"There's a grain of truth to that," concedes Stanley Kutler, a retired professor of law and history at the University of Wisconsin and the author of "The Wars of Watergate." Nixon was weakened, Kutler says, by the prospect of impeachment. But what truly cost Nixon, Kutler points out, was not Democratic support for impeachment, overwhelming though it was, but Republican support for it. "I can flat-out tell you there's not going to be any impeachment until and unless you have Republican votes," Kutler says.
And the difficulties that the impeachment movement is having convincing Democrats to sign on suggests that it's going to have even less luck with Republicans.
Ultimately, the decision is a political one. Even in Nixon's case, Kutler points out, some Republicans stood by the president until the bitter end. Among them was a first-term Mississippi congressman on the judiciary committee named Trent Lott, who declared himself opposed to impeaching presidents. A quarter-century later, as Senate majority leader, he helped lead the drive to impeach Clinton.
Drake Bennett is the staff writer for Ideas. E-mail drbennett@globe.com
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