NY Times writer, Gail Collins, says, in an article, TIME FOR HIM TO GO, that George W. Bush should go now. She observes, Bush,
"who is currently on a trip to Peru to meet with Asian leaders who no longer care what he thinks — hasn’t got the clout, or possibly even the energy, to do anything useful. His most recent contribution to resolving the fiscal crisis was lecturing representatives of the world’s most important economies on the glories of free-market capitalism."
Collins suggests that Cheney would have to agree to resign, then Bush and Nancy Pelosi would step in and let Obama take charge. Then she observes that at least, this way, a woman would be president for a short time. (And I like the idea of getting Pelosi out of the house, though she'd probably run for her old seat. Oh well.
Then, Collins goes a bit tongue in cheek, saying,
"Bush might not love the idea of quitting before he has a chance to light the Christmas tree or commute the execution of one last presidential turkey. After all, he still has a couple more trips planned. And last-minute regulations to issue. (So many national parks to despoil, so many endangered species to exterminate ... .) And then there’s all the packing.
On the other hand, he might want to consider his legacy, such as it is.
In happier days, Bush may have nurtured hopes of making it into the list of America’s mediocre presidents, but somewhere between Iraq and Katrina, that goal became a mountain too high. However, he might still have a chance to avoid the absolute bottom of the barrel, a spot currently occupied by James Buchanan, at least in my opinion."
She points out that Buchanan is rated worst because he did nothing, and that's what Bush seems to be doing.
And Collins is not the only one talking this way. Thomas Friedman writes, "If I had my druthers right now we would convene a special session of Congress, amend the Constitution and move up the inauguration from Jan. 20 to Thanksgiving Day."
Back in the spring and even early summer, and for several years before then, I was supporting impeachment. It should have happened and would have been the right thing to do. My vision of the process had the hearings in the congress as the vehicle for churning out enough evidence so the Republicans in the senate would go to Cheney, then Bush and tell them to resign or they would be impeached-- and that they Republicans would do it because they would be trying to save their party.
But the Dems were afraid to do it. And there were risks. If done too early, the Republicans could have claimed they'd purged themselves of their problems and t they could have blamed whichever Republican the Dem majority congress approved was unable to help the US because of the Dems.
But it's over now and I find it hard to envision a way where the lame duck Republicans in the senate would cooperate in getting rid of Bush, unless, as Collins suggests, they saw it as a way to get Obama in trouble and blame him more than Limbaugh has already begun to do. Collins observes,
"The person who would like this plan least probably would be Barack Obama. Who would want to be saddled with the auto industry’s problems ahead of schedule? The heads of America’s great carmaking corporations are so dim that they couldn’t even survive hearings run by members of Congress who actually wanted to help them. Really, when somebody asks you exactly how much money you need, the answer should not be something along the line of “a whole bunch.”
An instantaneous takeover would also ruin the Obama team’s plan to have the tidiest, best-organized presidential transition in history. Cutting it short and leaping into governing would turn their measured march toward power into a mad scramble. A lot of their Cabinet picks are still working on those 62-page questionnaires."
So, we face a lovely situation. Bush will surely want to unleash an unholy swarm of deregulations and orders favoring his favorite corporations, and he'll want to pardon a whole bunch of traitors and corrupt politicians and their enablers, flunkies and co-conspirators. The only way I can imagine him leaving is if the Republican lame duck senators persuade Nancy Pelosi to take impeachment off the table, or if they go straight to Bush and advise him that the only way to save his legacy AND the Republican party is for him to go.
Sorry. Not very likely. I've been thinking, since the election, that any hope for impeachment was gone, since the only reason to start it was to get the Republicans to act, to do "THE WALK" to tell Cheney and Bush to leave. That time is over. Now, more than ever, we face a time when it would be much better if someone would hand the reins over to Obama-- like his appointees or not. He certainly brings us more hope than Bush.
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