The Impeachment of Dick Cheney

You wish!
But in a sense, it’s astonishing that this hasn’t surfaced yet, because it’s really an open-and-shut case, without the practical liability of a Bush impeachment that would leave Cheney himself as President. For the details of what Cheney did and when he did it, see the article by David Corn in the March 19 Nation. The details, as I’ll explain, aren’t really that important anyway, most of what he personally did being on the order of “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” The central point is that there was a conspiracy, centered in either the White House or Cheney’s office or both, but with the VP not having the defense of being the Chief Executive, Commander-in-Chief, etc., that Bush could make. In any event, what’s clear from all the coverage, the trial itself, and the comments of Patrick Fitzgerald (and the jurors), is that in the plot to smear Joseph Wilson and cover up the lies that led to War, there are in effect a bunch of unindicted co-conspirators still at large, including at a minimum Cheney and Karl Rove, who took the easy way out (and I would insist Robert Novak). The offenses that got Andrew Johnson impeached, mostly being essentially policy disagreements, were nothing compared to this.

I think that it’s partly because of a couple of common misapprehensions about the impeachment process that the case hasn’t got legs so far. First, the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” is usually misunderstood, as though crimes were really bad and “misdemeanors” something less, like unpaid parking tickets. This is not so. That’s the second dictionary definition of the word, but the first (AHD) is simply “a misdeed.” Period. And the drafters of the Constitution knew their words very well. So a “high...misdemeanor” is a very, very bad misdeed–and it doesn’t have to be a crime at all in the formal legal sense. So Fitzgerald’s assertion of not having the evidence to prosecute the VP for a “crime,” while presumably true, has no bearing on the issue–the standards for proceeding are not the same at all.
Second, what are the standards? Essentially, there are none. In an impeachment proceeding, the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee (or a hired prosecutorial gun) is the prosecutor, and the full House acts as a Grand Jury. So it only has to find “probable cause” of an indictable offense, after which the jury–the Senate–will decide whether the offense is serious enough, whether the case has been made that it actually took place, and whether it ought to be done anyhow. In other words, whether or not to convict.
Impeachment, in order words, is primarily a political rather than a criminal proceeding. The House sets its own rules, and if it wanted to, it could indict the President for serving imported French cheese, and do so on the basis of unsubstantiated rumors at that. The usual rules of evidence, prohibitions against, hearsay, etc., do not apply. As Howard Baker said about Nixon, the question is “what did he know and when did he know it;” and he meant not can we prove it but are we or will we be satisfied that we (the Senate) know enough to convict. In fact, a defense of “you can’t prove it” would itself be a strong ground for conviction--or at least impeachment, which is the main issue, because in order to make a case the House would have to explore the entire run-up to the War, the lies about WMDs, and so forth. The whole vile mess would be exposed, and couldn’t be prevented by refusals to testify that would just serve to confirm the accusations. It would be one of the greatest learning experiences the American public would ever have had. Alas, I must use a weirdly subjunctive tense.
Of course in a different kind of society or social order the subject wouldn’t arise. In Japan not so long ago, the miscreant would have fallen on his sword (or however they do it). In the British Army, he would resign “for the honor of the Regiment.” In the US Army, he’d take “early retirement,” or else be reassigned to command an MP battalion in Juneau, Alaska. In the US Navy, it would go on his record that he could never again have a command. But American politics is not about honor, and the VP thug doesn’t have any anyhow. So here we are--let's all get in touch with John Conyers, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and tell him to go for it.