Dennis Kucinich, President Bush, and impeachment

What happened

House Democrats swept away a proposal by former presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to impeach President Bush for, among other charges, allegedly lying to the American public about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. By a 251-166 vote, the House on Wednesday sent the 35-count articles of impeachment—which Kucinich had spent several hours reading into the record—to the Judiciary Committee, which is expected to let it die and prevent any debate before the full House. (The Boston Globe)

What the commentators said

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That’s just what we needed, said the Cleveland Plain-Dealer in an editorial, another empty gesture from Kucinich. The Bush indictment, of course, ended up “in the bottom of the committee’s in-box,” where it will languish along with his attempt from last year to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Everyone knows Bush “has bungled issues at home and abroad,” but he’ll be out of office in seven months, so why not focus on problems that won’t go away?

Bill Clinton was impeached over a “disgusting embarrassing peccadillo” with an intern, said the Palm Springs, Calif., Desert Sun in an editorial. And that hurt no one but his family. Why couldn’t Bush be impeached for, as a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said, deliberately painting an inaccurate picture to justify launching a war that has killed thousands of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?

“It is not politically correct to offer a good word about Dennis Kucinich, the elfish, left-leaning congressman from Ohio” with a tendency to launch quixotic bids for the presidency, said Marie Cocco in RealClearPolitics. But his articles of impeachment provide “a bleak road map through seven years of deceptions and misjudgments, incompetence and malevolence,” and they provide a better picture of the Bush White House than a tell-all book by a former press secretary can.

It’s interesting reading, no doubt, said the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Sun-Sentinel in an editorial. But Congress has more important matters at hand. “There are a couple of wars going on, unemployment is on the rise as the value of a house continues to fall, millions of Americans have no health insurance, and did we mention that gas prices are expected to hit $5 a gallon?” Let’s hope Kucinich’s colleagues don’t waste a minute discussing the “ridiculous idea of impeachment.”