- Joined
- Jun 29, 2015
- Messages
- 714
- Points
- 43
In footage from a CNN Town Hall, Pelosi said she knew that the infamous WMD-narrative created by the Bush administration wasn’t real. That’s unsettling on its own. But so is the candor and casualness with which she reveals it. Even on live television it doesn’t occur to Pelosi just how bad this answer sounds. She chalks up her passiveness in pursuing Bush’s impeachment to “not wanting to make [impeachment] a way of life” for Americans. Her decision to allow the president to continue an illegal war (started because of a lie she was aware of) was therefore rational because it spared us another impeachment debacle.
Pelosi’s reasoning doesn’t make sense—starting a war based on a coordinated public lie is illegal, and therefore more than enough grounds for impeachment. Her comments illustrate a core problem with the Democrats’ view of impeachment: presidents can only be impeached when they mess with the two-party system. Richard Nixon oversaw illegal bombing of Cambodia and aggressively ramped up American military presence in Vietnam, but was only impeached when his minions broke into the Watergate to steal Democratic documents. And despite Donald Trump’s rampant corruption, Pelosi et. al. only decided to go after him when he bribed a foreign government to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, a potential 2020 election opponent.