“President Nancy Pelosi” a possibility?

Remove Cheney, Bush and you have President Nancy Pelosi

Recently, Republicans stepped back in the House to allow Democrats the opportunity to debate the issue of Vice President Dick Cheney’s impeachment. The impeachment charge is currently led by Representative Dennis Kucinich. There are many interesting factors at play, but the main one is Republicans believe by allowing Democrats to air out their thoughts, they would prove GOP assertions correct. Republican arguments go along the following lines: “Democrats have become so liberal and irrational and are in bed with the Internet leftist bloggers, that they’d do anything just to smear a Republican.” They often mention the “moveon.org movement” and “leftist bloggers” as anti-American, and if they thought they could benefit politically from it, they’d call everyone left of Joe Lieberman a terrorist. (although, I’m sure Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh already have.. so it’ll happen in due course)

In any event, the dramatics last wee were anti-climatic, as very little came out of Dennis Kucinich second attempt to raise the issue of impeachment. The impeachment issue is gaining a lot of steam with the general public and particularly on the Internet, but it’s a lot harder to make a case against Dick Cheney when evidence is required to support the allegations in an impeachment proceeding. The tougher problem that “liberal” and libertarian Americans need to crack is that Nancy Pelosi and a few ranking Democrats would rather see the entire GOP hang itself on the Iraq issue so that the maximum number of Democrats can be pushed into office in 2008. It is a difficult choice to make, on the one hand do you try to get the kind of numbers you need to undo everything President Bush has broken, or do you go with the cause of “justice” and unearth the corruption and oust the perpetrators of illegal activity in the White House.

One of the reasons impeachment doesn’t help, is because the exorbitant amount of time it might take to try the Vice President, especially since the White House has been uncooperative with subpoena requests for documentation and we know that Karl Rove ordered e-mails deleted (five million) in the past. So even if impeachment moved forward, there are numbers in the house to make the debate happen, the risk of impeachment being blocked by stonewalling and made ineffective is very high. There is also the question of power and balance which is decidedly skewed in favor of President Bush right now. If Democrats were to fail to support their allegations before a Senate inquiry, this could further lead to American distrust and weakening of the legislative branch which would go contrary to the purpose of raising the articles of impeachment at all. In other words, by attempting to fight off “fascism, extremism, and corruption”, should they fail due to an uncooperative, deceptive, or government stalemate, they could propel the executive into a kind of pseudo dictatorship that might not be stoppable the next time illegal acts take place while in office.

The Supreme Court could have a say before all is said and done.

Does anyone remember the 2000 election? There are politicians, judges and lawyers who have all lost faith in the Constitution due to the partisan court that reared its ugly head to help elevate President Bush to the executive office. Some justices have publicly stated that they were on the verge of resignation due to the result of injustice at the highest court. Now, imagine for a second that a legislative stalemate with a divisive, rogue Executive branch occurs. Since 2000, the Court has become more conservative, and although we know that the men sitting at the top are sworn in to defend the Constitution, who really believes that they can step outside the bounds of partisanship to fairly rule on the issues of Separation of Powers, Constitutional Law, torture, and a conspiracy against the United States to deceive the American people into going to war?

When you really think about it, the task would be enormous to prove that the President was a willing, lying offender of the Presidential oaths with evil motives. The media –greatly owned by Rupert Murdoch who owns the Fox News soap box and Wall Street Journal– would have a field day with it. And guess what? The “Liberal” media would be all over it too, because we know how opinionated and scandalous material tends to spread like wildfire on the Internet and over the airwaves. The “Free Press” is no longer free, it is a slave to corporate profiteering and a voice of greed, fear, and intolerance rather than a voice of the people. At that point, you should draw the same conclusions. Republicans, maybe under Karl Rove or his successor, would spin the failure into an abyss from which the Democrats might never escape.

The alternative, of course, is doing the easy thing: sit back and wait for the 2008 election and celebrate until the sun comes up the following morning. If Republicans believe they can squeak by with their usual rhetoric, they are going to hang themselves. Therein lies the rub, perhaps the brilliance, of what Nancy Pelosi and the anti-impeachment force is doing. On the off chance that the liberty howlers and justice freaks win the battle, the irony of it all is that Nancy Pelosi would become our next President. She would, in effect, be the first female President of the United States and not Hillary Clinton, oh the drama! Hey, this is all fun speculation, of course we all know what is most likely to happen, and you better get used to it:

Nothing.

Fred Soto is an Attorney and Entrepreneur from the Silicon Valley.
Email this author | All posts by Fred Soto