In another sign of crumbling support for the current presidential administration, 30 members of the Middletown Democratic Town Committee unanimously passed a resolution last Thursday to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Though the resolution functions largely as a symbolic statement, the Committee viewed it as part of a broader movement of public discontent and outrage.
“[The resolution is] a small link in a chain of what is being brought forth by people all over the world,” committee member and public defender Jim Streeto said at the meeting.
As Councilman Gerald Daley (D), who originally proposed the resolution, read aloud to the assembly, committee members sighed, shook their heads, and murmured things like “that’s right” underneath their breath. The Democrats quickly seconded, thirded and sixthed the resolution, followed by a half hour discussion of the proposal.
“There was no suggestion of ‘throw the guys out,’” recalled Olin Documents Librarian Erhard Konerding, who attended. “[The resolution] doesn’t have any force but a moral force.”
Once a topic relegated to bumper stickers and protest slogans, impeachment is no longer a fringe issue. According to impeachpac.org, a website that supports Democrats in favor of impeaching Bush and Cheney, well over one hundred impeachment resolutions have been passed in town meetings, labor unions, and city councils across the country, and more than forty democratic town committees have sent similar resolutions to Congress. But while a July USA Today/Gallup poll found that 36 percent of Americans favor impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has firmly tabled the issue.
The Middletown resolution, which will be sent to the Connecticut Congressional Delegation and the State Central Committee of the Connecticut Democratic Party, calls for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney on the grounds that, among other offences, they “lied in order to lead our country into war based on propaganda and false statements,” “subverted the national security interests of the United States,” and condoned illegal detentions in which “people are routinely subjected to abusive treatment, with documented cases of torture.”
“If anything, the degree to which the government has trampled the constitution is underrepresented in this,” Streeto commented on Thursday.
The strongly worded document seemed to accurately reflect the committee members’ frustration with the Bush administration, and many of them publicly thanked Councilman Daley for bringing the resolution forward.
“For the first time since 1986, the committee is making a decision,” said Councilman Robert Santangelo (D), who took over his mother’s seat on the council in that year. “This is the voice of Democrats, not the people who represent the Democrats.”
Many of the comments focused on Bush’s perceived mismanagement of the war in Iraq. Councilman Daley said he was inspired to propose the resolution after reading a column in last week’s Hartford Courant, one that linked President Bush to a particularly egregious example of corruption in Iraq.
Wesleyan Democrats President Chris Goy ’09, however, had one serious reservation. While he ultimately supported the resolution, Goy was concerned with the implications of impeaching two presidents in a row.
“People feel that when we have somebody in office who we don’t like, the obvious choice is to impeach them,” he later explained.
Daley commented that he sees a distinction between the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and his current proposal.
“The Clinton impeachment was based on his personal transgressions,” Daley said. “This is not in any way related to Bush the man.”
Several committee members recalled the force of the anti-Vietnam War movement and bemoaned the lack of a comparable mobilization around the Iraq war, which they attributed to the lack of a military draft.
“Students have a powerful voice in the country, and they have the most at stake,” Daley said. “The burden and the casualty count of this war are going to fall on your generation, not mine.”
In contrast, College Democrats of Connecticut president Matt Lesser ’09, one of a handful of Young Democrats at the meeting, urged a more local focus.
“I think it’s really important for Wesleyan students to realize that we’re part of this community, not just guests here,” he said.
On campus, interest in impeachment has been slight. Joanna Arnow ’08, who last fall organized a sparsely attended lecture by David Lindorf, co-author of “The Case for Impeachment,” wonders if the Middletown resolution may not have been more effective earlier in the year.
“I feel like last January was a good time for impeachment; now the moment has kind of passed,” Arnow said.
However, at least one participant in Thursday’s meeting, dismissed the problem of timing as secondary.
“If it the right thing to do, then it really doesn’t matter when we do it,” one woman said at the meeting.
Chalmers Hamill ’11 and Veronica Manfredi ’09, co-founders of the Wesleyan chapter of the newly reconstituted Students for a Democratic Society, were similarly skeptical.
“Instead of addressing systemic, structural inequalities, it focuses on figureheads,” Manfredi said.
“It seems irrelevant whether or not they are impeached,” added Hamill. “Others like them will be at the ready.”
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