I've heard a couple of muted cyber-cries for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, and that naturally got me thinking about the impeachment hearings against William Jefferson Clinton. 

At the time, I clucked and snorted like the rest of the people I know, about how stupid it all was, about the ridiculousness of the "crime" and the attempt to unseat a legitimately elected president over something so spectacularly trivial. 

I didn't really believe that the Republicans were genuinely upset about white stains and white lies; I thought that they were just so virulently anti-Clinton that they would shove their crampons into any tiny crevice they could find in the hope of bringing him down.  Now, however, I think they had a much longer vision, and a much more effective strategy:  they knew that legitimately elected Republican presidents were certain to engage in much more serious offenses against the American people (to say nothing of the ones who weren't legitimately elected), so they wanted to play the impeachment card first.  Now, if anyone tries to impeach, let's just say, George W. Bush, they will be able to count on several useful phenomena.

1)  They will be able to present the argument that this is petty political "payback" for what they did to Clinton.
2)  They act of impeaching a president will seem less like something to take seriously, and more like a political tool, so attention will divertable from the putative crime of the president to the "strategies" that both sides use.
3)  There will "impeachment fatigue" among the public and the media, meaning less support for the bureaucratic grind of impeaching someone who will be out of office in a couple of  years anyway.

Ultimately, I guess, by getting a blowjob in the Oval Office, Bill Clinton is guilty of making it easier for, hypothetically speaking, George W. Bush to get away with murder.

Tags: politics, usa
Current Mood: Machiavellian