December 22, 2005

California might be on to something, according to syndicated columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall, who made the case for a national recall instead of impeachment, and made it before the latest round of revelations. Rall wrote last month, when we thought exposing CIA agents they didn’t like and maintaining secret torture prisons was all Bush-Cheney were up to.

To “kill the hydra,” we have to get rid of them all, and that means a new election.

…our constitutional system only allows for impeaching individuals, not whole administrations. If Cheney is indicted and forced to quit, Bush will appoint a replacement–Washington scuttlebutt points to secretary of state Condi Rice. If Bush falls, Rice ascends. If something happens to Rice, the person she chose as vice president succeeds her. All the political hacks who lied and schemed and whose incompetence led to the current crisis of leadership–Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove–stay in place. The hydra lives.

Rall rightly points out that simply impeaching Bush (and finding him unfit for office) would make no substantive change. To “kill the hydra,” we have to get rid of them all, and that means a new election.

One solution is to establish a California-style recall system on the national level. If a significant percentage of Americans loses confidence in the president and his administration to the extent that they’re willing to sign a recall petition, a special election should be held within three months. The number of required signatures should be high enough–California’s system calls for 12 percent of the number of people who cast votes in the preceding election–to ensure that recalls are only held as the result of widespread disgust among the citizenry.

To avoid disruption, the constitutional amendment creating the recall provision could prevent such elections from being held more often than, say, annually. And a recall won’t automatically result in a new party taking over the White House–just a new administration. But it would replace our current system of political stagnation with a more dynamic democracy.

“A more dynamic democracy.” I like the sound of that. Where do I sign the petition?

Day: December 22, 2005

Forget Impeachment, Let’s Have a National Recall

Poetic Justice

Verbatim

“One woman at a rally in New Jersey told me last week that she was ‘nauseously optimistic.’ That may capture a lot of people’s last-minute jitters.”

— Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), quoted by Axios, on what Democrats feel ahead of the midterm elections.

“I think Congress made a mistake not protesting turning the Rose Garden into what looks like the entrance to Liberace’s bathroom.”

— Former President Bill Clinton, quoted by The Wrap.

“Boy, they are scraping the bottom of the barrel. It feels like a real desperation play to me, because it has got zero basis in the law.”

— Republican election law expert Ben Ginsberg, quoted by Politico, on the Trump administration’s effort to invalidate Alaska’s election results.

Numerati

3,824

$1.4 billion

-35 points

31%

63% to 38%

KFF Poll: “With the 2026 midterm campaigns in full swing and early voting about to begin, there is a wide enthusiasm gap between partisan voters, with Democratic voters 25 percentage points more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ than usual to vote (63% vs. 38%).”