The Impeachment Debate

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MADELEINE BRAND, host:

This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Madeleine Brand.

In a few minutes, how old is too old to fly a commercial airliner? One pilot weighs in.

First though, impeach the president. That's the call from a grassroots movement around the country. Politicians say it will never happen, but that is not stopping the men and women determined to try the president and vice president for high crimes and misdemeanors.

NPR's Celeste Headlee reports.

CELESTE HEADLEE: The Los Angeles National Impeachment Center opened on July 4th of this year. Ruth Stedman has volunteered for the group ever since.

Ms. RUTH STEDMAN (Council Coordinator, Los Angeles National Impeachment Center): What I believe is that an accounting has to take place, that the average person feels betrayed.

HEADLEE: Stedman is working hard to get the Los Angeles City Council to pass a resolution supporting the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. So far 81 cities, including San Francisco and Detroit, have taken that action.

And a Minnesota resident, Colin Lee(ph), wants more. He spoke ardently at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis.

Mr. COLIN LEE (Resident, Minnesota): We all need to talk to the Judiciary Committee, tell all the members, tell John Conyers, that we want impeachment hearings. We want to hear...

(Soundbite of cheering)

Mr. LEE: We want to hear what is really happening in our country.

HEADLEE: And it's not just irate activists. Republican Bruce Fein was the associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan. He's become a passionate advocate for impeachment because he says the Bush administration behaves as if it's above the law.

Mr. BRUCE FEIN (Attorney): I believe that the American people sense that the kinds of abuses of authority that have been chronic through the Bush administration, whether it's thwarting congressional oversight, whether it's flouting congressional statutes, whether it's kidnapping and interrogating and torturing people abroad without any political or other accountability, are all symptoms of something gone astray.

Mr. LEON PANETTA (Former White House Chief of Staff): There isn't a reasonable chance for success with impeachment at the present time. The votes just are not there.

HEADLEE: That's Leon Panetta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton. He now directs a political think tank.

Mr. PANETTA: On the Senate side, where you need a two-thirds vote, 18 Republicans have to cross over for a conviction on impeachment. There isn't a chance that that's going to happen.

HEADLEE: And, Panetta says, it opens a whole other can of worms.

Mr. PANETTA: If you're proceeding with an effort to impeach the president, I assume both the president and the vice president, because people who don't like Bush certainly don't want Cheney, you're likely to galvanize Republican opposition at a time when I think President Bush is losing the national debate over a number of issues but particularly over Iraq. So it doesn't seem to me that that makes a great deal of sense.

HEADLEE: Panetta says there are bigger problems for legislators: the war in Iraq, budget deficits, and the investigation into Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Stedman says those things are important, but they hardly outweigh what she calls the constitutional violations of the president.

Ms. STEDMAN: It feels like the basement is on fire and they're still haggling over redecorating the living room. To me this is the biggest priority. Everything else depends on this - on upholding and renewing our belief in our government and the Constitution, that it will be defended. At this point it seems like a meaningless piece of paper.

HEADLEE: There is some movement in Congress. House Resolution 333 calls for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. But so far only 19 congressmen have signed on. And some say it's unlikely to go any further.

Ken Gormley is a professor at Duquesne University and an expert in Constitutional law. He says unless some kind of smoking gun appears that connects the president to a flagrant violation, it's not likely anyone can prove George Bush has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

Professor KEN GORMLEY (Duquesne University): You don't convict someone for impeachment because you think they have a massive government and bungled things. In the next election you deal with it through the electoral process.

HEADLEE: Bruce Fein says Democrats don't want to touch the issue, not because they think it's unjustified, he says, but because they fear it would be political suicide.

Mr. FEIN: The Democrats still live in fear of 9/11 being used against them in 2008 as showing that they're soft on terrorism. They don't really get it. And I think that the members, generally, are too unschooled in the Constitution to be able to explain to the American people that there's no need to compromise our security yet honoring the Constitution.

HEADLEE: Pundits say it's unlikely the Democrats will take the risk of introducing articles of impeachment before the 2008 election.

Ken Gormley says recent history proves the bar for success is just too high.

Prof. GORMLEY: You will notice that President Clinton was not actually convicted by the Senate, and that's a testament to the fact that it is intentionally quite difficult to actually convict an official and remove that individual from office under the impeachment provisions.

HEADLEE: And impeachment proceedings would consume the Congress for months and cost millions of dollars.

Celeste Headlee, NPR News, Detroit.

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