Lots of readers offer this objection:
Huh. I guess I’d have thought the reason that Bush hasn’t been impeached
is because regardless of how incompetent or tone deaf one might find him,
neither of those things qualify as High Crimes and Misdemeanors?
If making a decision (based on the data at hand) and sticking with it no
matter what were common, perhaps we’d not have the divorce rate we do. 🙂
Anyway, Occam’s razor might suggest that the reason he hasn’t been
impeached is because the majority of people recognize that, like him or
hate him, he hasn’t actually committed any crimes.
But that’s just me.
Me: Yeah, I thought of this and it’s a good point. But ultimately as I believe Gerry Ford said, an impeachable offense is whatever Congress decides is impeachable. Similarly, if large enough numbers of voters wanted the President impeached he’d be impeached. Again, it’s a fair point. But what I was trying to do is highlight how these folks talk about how there must be these complex reasons why Bush hasn’t been impeached since “everyone knows” he should be. I can’t possibly be that these people are out of touch. It’s sort of a Pauline Kael “nobody could have voted for Nixon thing” I was going for.