Why Not Censure George Bush? :Bill Press

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http://billpress.com/columns.html

Why Not Censure George Bush?
March 16, 2006


It’s hard to argue with his logic: “When the President of the United States breaks the law, he must be held accountable.”

Yet when Sen. Russ Feingold spoke those words in introducing his measure to censure President Bush for ordering the NSA to spy on American citizens without a court order — and lying to Congress and the American people about it — Republicans reacted as if he’d ordered suicide bombers to crash the gates of the White House. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist insisted it sent the “wrong message” to terrorists. Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich accused Feingold of “playing politics.” And conservative activist Paul Weyrich said it proved the Democratic Party was the “party of impeachment.”

Nonsense. Wrong message? There’s nothing wrong in telling the world we expect even the president to obey the law. Playing politics? Look who’s talking. Democrats, the impeachment party? That’s laugh-out-loud funny. Americans may have a short memory, but we still remember which party impeached Bill Clinton — and for what.

Once again, there’s more than a little hypocrisy at play. When Democrats proposed censure, rather than impeachment, as a more appropriate response for Clinton’s peccadillo, Republicans rejected it as “insufficient” and a “mere scolding.” Judiciary Chairman Henry Hyde dismissed censure as nothing more than “impeachment lite.” Yet if censure was so insufficient for Clinton’s lie about (legal) sex, why is it suddenly so unfair for Bush’s lie about (illegal) wiretapping, surely a more serious offense?

But here’s what I really don’t get. You expect knee-jerk Republicans to line up behind Bush and attack Feingold. What happened to his fellow Democrats? Once he called for censuring President Bush, Democrats ran away from Feingold faster than cockroaches running away from Tom DeLay.