Thank You Frank Rich for Making My Point

This morning, Frank Rich’s New York Times Op/Ed piece is about the difference between a totally Machiavellian Richard Nixon and little dweeby George W. Bush who is merely a pissant wee putz (my words) surrounded by Machiavellis. On the face of it, that’s not my point at all. HOWEVER, Rich says a sizable majority of both Republican and Democrat voters being polled are weary of George W. Bush and they can’t wait until he’s gone. “He will nonetheless leave Americans feeling much the way they did after Nixon fled: in a state of anger about the state of the nation... the rage is already omnipresent, and it’s bipartisan... On the Democratic side, the left is furious at the new Congress’s failure to instantly fulfill its November mandate to end the war in Iraq.” Here comes my point. Rich says, “After it sent Mr. Bush a war-spending bill stripped of troop-withdrawal deadlines 10 days ago, the cries of betrayal were shrill, and not just from bloggers. John Edwards, once one of the more bellicose Democratic cheerleaders for the war (“I believe that the risk of inaction is far greater than the risk of action,” he thundered on the Senate floor in September 2002), is now equally bellicose toward his former colleagues. He chastises them for not sending the president the same withdrawal bill he vetoed “again and again” so that Mr. Bush would be forced to realize “he has no choice” but to end the war. It’s not exactly clear how a legislative Groundhog Day could accomplish this feat when the president’s obstinacy knows no bounds and the Democrats’ lack of a veto-proof Congressional majority poses no threat to his truculence.” There it is. That’s my point. How the hell could sending the same withdrawal bill over and over to a President who is incapable of realizing anything except his veto power, end the war in Iraq? I understand the Democrats’ fury at being impotent in the face of the power that was seized by the Republican Party through lies and fraud. But I do not understand the Democratic Party focusing that fury on itself rather than on the Republican Party. Rich says “persistent cries for impeachment have gone nowhere in the Democratic Party hierarchy." And it's because “President Bush is less an overreaching Machiavelli than an epic blunderer surrounded by Machiavellis.” If, in fact, impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would be a meaningless symbolic act, I say, let’s impeach them anyway. Impeachment is a positive, unifying, doable act. It’s a way to express our rage. And it is cathartic and empowering. Let’s do it! Let's impeach the bastards!