A stirring call for impeachment
by digby
This is quite an argument for impeachment, don’t you think?
It has been rightly observed that we are a government of laws and not of men, and, I would add, neither are we are government of the opinions of men and women…With the intense media attention paid to the president’s approval ratings before and after his half confession/half excuse speech, a passive observer might conclude that we live in a pure democracy, the likes of which was sought in the French Revolution.
In such a realm, the Supreme Law of the Land is the Vox Populi, literally ‘the voice of the people’. There is no law apart from what the people recognize to be the law at any given time. This was best illustrated to me recently by a security guard who approached as I read a front page story about the President and the polls and sarcastically asked, ‘what is the law today?’.
News flash to the major media networks: we live in a constitutional republic. We are governed by written constitution which defines, among other things, the rights, privileges and responsibilities of high office with great clarity. Under Article II, Section 1 the executive power of the United States of America is vested in the President. In the oath of office proscribed, a president commits to faithfully execute the office and preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.
While the office brings with it the duties that attend the administration of the government, as President Herbert C. Hoover wrote, “The Presidency is more than executive responsibility. It is the inspiring supreme symbol of all that is highest in our American ideals.” When a president fails to fulfill his oath of office, as is the case where the law is broken in a big way or a small way (another way of saying high crimes or misdemeanors), the Constitution provides for a mechanism whereby the legislative branch might impeach him.
This may seem drastic to the average American. It is. Our founders intended it to be so because they intended the President of the United States to be the center of the government of the United States. Other constructs were considered, including the appointment of a prime minister-like president by the legislative branch, but all were rejected in favor of a strong and elected President. Alexander Hamilton defended this concept in ‘The Federalist’ writing, “the Executive is a leading characteristic in the definition of good government… it is essential to the steady administration of the law.”
Hamilton also cautioned against long suffering where a President failed to meet this high standard, writing, “a feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of government. A feeble Executive is but another name for a bad executive; and a government ill-executed… must be proclaimed a bad government.”
Stirring isn’t it? I’ll bet you’re wondering who wrote it.
That was Mike Pence in 1998:
Against this recitation of the Supreme Law of the Land, only one sad conclusion attaches; President Bill Clinton must resign or be removed from the office of President of the United States.
That “crime” you’ll recall was about lying in a civil case, backed by right wing operatives, that was dismissed by the judge. The lie was about an extramarital affair.
Paying off porn stars, monumental grifting from the oval office, selling out the country to foreign adversaries, alienating and betraying allies and generally behaving in petty, vindictive, juvenile fashion aren’t big deals, apparently. Perhaps it was the trivial nature of Clinton’s alleged crime that offended Pence so much. If only he’d acted more like a real traitor, he would have been respected.
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