Just wanted to respond to Mr. Abote's comment in the thread below. Length necessitated a new post. Abote writes:

All of us are aware that it takes a two-thirds majority in the Senate to remove an impeached President from office, right? Just checking.

How would the NY Times's advocacy of removing Bush from office -- I assume you mean you want Bush actually convicted and removed, not just impeached -- actually result in winning 67 Senate votes?

There are about 18 months left on Bush's term. It took the GOP over a year to go from the first reports of the Lewinsky affair to a Senate vote on conviction -- a conviction that it failed to obtain.

Also, I'm not sure that the Times was a "cheerleader" of the invasion of Iraq. This claim didn't match my recollections at all, so I did some research. Yes, Judy Miller wrote those awful articles. But the editorial board never fully supported what Bush intended to do, and certainly didn't cheer it on. On March 9, 2003, about a week before the invasion, the Times editorial board published an editorial that was plainly titled "Saying No to War."

I'm not saying that the Times' advocacy of impeachment would produce the necessary votes to convict. My point was that they're defining our options for us. One can argue impeachment on the merits, from a variety of perspectives: moral, social, pragmatic, political, etc. But the point is that for the Times, and other elements of the "leadership" it's off the table. For the public, if polls are to be believed, it's very much on the table. On this issue and a host of others there is a large gap between public opinion and elite consensus (and thus policy outcomes). This is evidence of a lack of democracy; the preservation of democratic forms as a veneer over the absence of genuine democratic activity.

Secondly, given that the Times has stated that they don't think Bush will leave, what possible good do they think it will do to advocate withdrawal as long as he's still in office? To what end are they writing this? It would be as if they noted that an impeachment conviction was impossible due to lack of votes, but nevertheless strenuously advocated impeachment. What is the point of such discourse if not to only appear to be on the side of right, but not actually have to pay any price for it?

Your point about the lack of votes I also find unconvincing. Things change over time. The Clinton impeachment was very unpopular, so it was no surprise that the Senate failed to convict. The playing field is already very different and would only change after months of headlines about Bushite criminality. I'm not saying it would definitely be successful, I'm just saying that its not impossible and even highly plausible. If The New York Times accurately reported the results of the investigation on the front page, AND advocated impeachment and then conviction on the editorial page, it would have a noticeable effect on the outcome. However this would entail some element of genuine risk on the part of the Times, unlike their advocacy of withdrawal.

It did take the GOP a year to get from A to B with Clinton, but again, that's not the situation we're in. We're way past first reports of high crimes and misdeameanors. There are several ongoing investigations already that have revealed a great deal of malfeasance. People have already drawn up sample litigation to make the case against Bush, and that just with what we know now. At any rate, the timetable argument isn't dispositive either. There may be political and pragmatic benefits to tying Bush's hands with investigations for the rest of his term even if a conviction isn't obtained.

Lastly, maybe "cheerleader" isn't an appropriate term, "accomplice" might be better. I give much more weight to the Miller articles than you do, especially considering that they provided the cloak of legitimacy for the Administration to claim evidence of a threat. It is well documented that they leaked information that appeared on the front page, and then went on the Sunday bobblehead shows holding up the Times and saying, "Look! Even the Times says there's WMD!".

Not only was there propagation of disinformation, but there was considerable suppression of relevant information unfavorable to Bush's goals. Since the Times sets the boundaries for the rest of the country's papers, it became unacceptable in "serious" discussion to doubt their WMD reporting. The stance of the editorial page in no way mitigates this and is just another attempt at co-optation and maintaining a veneer of credibility.

Firstly, the anti-war stance was still well within the framework of the Administration's fictional worldview and did not question fundamental assumptions. What's more, as you point out, it was strongest well after the point that going to war was a foregone conclusion. The decision to go to war was made well before March 9, 2003, and it is simply not credible that this was not known in elite circles. We knew it for chrissake, so they must have known it. Thus their call to "say no to war" was of exactly the same value and serves exactly the same purposes as their call for withdrawal. It has zero value as an attempt at influencing policy, but substantial value as a propaganda device.