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.
…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?
Britain and some other countries already have a recall–a vote of no confidence and the government falls. A national recall is too cumbersome. A vote of no confidence would be better–maybe recall can be used to oust congress people who don’t vote no confidence…Anyway, the BIG problem is a failure of the Constitution to clearly delimit presidential powers. Presidential orders, for example, should be outlawed.
Indeed, but will “Diebold” be the machine that would count the recall votes? Kalifornia should once agan have another recall, and soon, to see how your theory plays out!
I support a Nation Recall…but only if Congress refuses to do its duty. The GOP should be put on the defensive.
Here’s how! Everytime the ‘crats have seized the initiative over the last several months, Bush, and by extension, the increasingly criminal GOP have suffered in the polls. The lesson to be learned is a simple one: “Triangulating the center” was and is a passive policy.
Where does it say that the “minority party” cannot dictate the agenda?
By moving forward actively, that is, moving forward to impeach Bush for crimes that he admits to, the GOP is put on the defensive.
“I don’t want to get any messages saying, “I am holding my position…. We are going to go through him like crap through a goose…!”
—George Patton, Somewhere in England, June 5th, 1944
So…let the criminal element inside the GOP do a little “triangulating” of their own; let the GOP struggle to “hold a position!” Make those who conspired with Diebold pay for their crimes. Make those who owe their positions to Halliburton pay up the bill that has come due.
If the Democrats don’t show any spine, they deserve to lose. Unforunately, the country itself is on the line.