Eric Zuesse
RINF Alternative News
President Obama is the most-despised American President in history; he’s dragging his Party down, but will Democrats impeach him, as Republicans did not impeach Bush (and thereby they became justifiably despised along with him, and so lost the 2008 election)?
Gallup had headlined on 22 April 2008 (bare months before the 2008 elections), “Bush’s 69% Job Disapproval Rating Highest in Gallup History,” and on 1 May 2008, CNN bannered “Poll: Bush Most Unpopular in Modern History” and they reported that, “A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush is handling his job as president.”
Republicans, of course, lost overwhelmingly in 2008.
However, by the time of 6 December 2010, Gallup headlined “Kennedy Still Highest-Rated Modern President, Nixon Lowest,” and they reported that Bush’s approval-rating had soared to 47%, while Nixon’s remained at only 29%, and so Nixon was back again as the most-despised President.
Democrats lost elections overwhelmingly in 2010, because Bush’s stain on his Party had washed out by then: short-attention-span Americans had forgotten even such recent history as pre-2009.
Now it’s Obama who is dragging his Party down. On 24 June 2014 (and we are now less than 4 short months away from the November elections), I headlined at Huffington Post, “Gallup: The Lowest-Rated Living President Or Ex-President Is Barack Obama,” and I reported: “A Gallup poll published on June 20th shows that the only living current or former occupant of the White House who has a negative rating from the U.S. public is its current occupant, President Obama, with 52% unfavorable, 47% favorable. All others of them are favorably rated. The least favorably rated of those (the one closest to Obama in unfavorability) is George W. Bush, with 53% favorable, 44% unfavorable. [That was up from around just 30% favorable in 2008.] His having invaded Iraq for non-existent WMD, and produced the 2008 crash, have apparently been forgiven, which is remarkable and which is due to his having increased his favorability rating from only 32% at the crash in 2008.”
On Tuesday, July 15th, the Washington Post bannered, “New Election Lab forecast suggests 86 percent chance that GOP wins Senate,” so that Republicans starting next year will probably (i.e.: divide 86% by 14% and the chances are higher than 6 to 1 odds that they’ll) control both houses of Congress, and the final two years of Obama’s Presidency are expected to be passing only legislation that Republicans want. This is merely the latest in a long line of such predictions of a total Republican grip on Washington during Obama’s closing two years, 2015 and 2016. All polling shows that anything else than that outcome would require almost a miracle. But if Democrats push for Obama’s impeachment, that impeachment of Obama by Democrats might provide this “miracle.”
President Obama is far less popular now than is even former President George W. Bush, and the widespread disgust with Obama is the chief thing that’s crippling the Democratic Party’s chances of retaining control in the Senate. People are blaming congressional Democrats as if they’re extensions of this profoundly unpopular President.
Americans should blame congressional Democrats – unless congressional Democrats disown him, as being a fake “Democrat,” not one of them but instead a Republican Trojan Horse conservative in their Party, and as his having pushed Republican-originated policies (including his Romneycare) – which hedid do.
He caved, before he even entered the White House, on his demand for a meaningful “public option,” and he failed to stand firm on his signature campaign-promise to increase taxes on $250,000+ earners. Economic inequality has soared during his Presidency as a result of his continuing Wall Street bailouts, and most wage-earners have lost instead of gained in their purchasing-power under his regime. Only the top 5% have gained. Such rising inequality after an economic crash is practically unheard-of.
But those things might be laid to his being merely a bad President, rather than to his having done anything impeachable. That assumption, however, is false: he has done many impeachable things. Consider:
Presidential oath (he swore to it):
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
First, there is “I will faithfully execute the Office of President”: he’s the CEO “of the United States.”
Get that! There is only one Chief Executive of the U.S., one person upon whose shoulders the entire Executive function rests; it is the President himself. As Harry Truman famously said: “The buck stops here.”
If the President does not “execute” the laws, then nobody does.
He is given a cabinet to carry out that function; he is given the SEC and other regulatory agencies to carry it out.
Obama instead BLOCKS its being carried out!
He actively prevents it. He even persecutes whistleblowers.
On June 15th, I headlined “America Is Guilty if Americans Don’t Prosecute Obama,” and I noted that,
I have previously documented that “Obama Definitely Lied About Having Intent to Prosecute Banksters,” and so won’t repeat that here. But suffice it to say in summary: Obama did publicly promise to pursue and prosecute any bankster-CEO criminality that had been involved in crashing the American economy in 2008, and Obama’s promise turned out to be a blatant lie. By contrast, he had told the banksters themselves the very opposite in private, barely two months into his Presidency, and he kept that promise to them, the promise that he had made in secret. He told them, “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. [He actually called us ‘pitchforks’there, as if we were the perpetrators.] … I want to help. … I’m not out there to go after you. … I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger.” And he did precisely that.
He gave a free stay-out-of-jail-and-keep-your-loot pass to the very same MBS-fraudsters-in-chiefs whose lucrative frauds had crashed the American economy in 2008. And he didn’t even prosecute George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for their mega-crimes such as lying this country into invading Iraq in 2003.
Those are absolutely monstrous crimes, costing America trillions and killing many thousands, and he absconded there totally on the first promise in his Presidential oath: “I will faithfully execute the office of President.”
On the second promise in his oath, “and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he has been almost as outrageous a Constitution-violator as was his predecessor – whom he has protected from prosecution for his crimes.
Obama doesn’t merely not enforce the law; he even blocks it from being enforced against his masters the banksters, and against his predecessor in service to them: Bush. Just remember:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States. …”
Instead, he traitorously BLOCKS the execution of “the Office of President,” by his systematically hiring as his enforcers only people who won’t do that, and by his systematically punishing or else pushing out anyone in that service who tries to do that. And see this and this.
So: there are people in the Executive Branch who want to do their jobs; Obama just won’t let them. That is treachery on his part.
If and only if congressional Democrats impeach him for it, they will retain control of both the House and the Senate.
Republicans certainly won’t do it. And they’d be committing political suicide even to try. They know this: that’s why they don’t do it; this is why they refuse to do it.
On Sunday, July 13th, Jason Easley – at politicsusa.com, which bills itself “Real Liberal Politics” – bannered, “Top House Republican Admits That There Are No Grounds To Impeach President Obama,”and Easley reported that, “The [Republican] chairman of the House Judiciary Committee admitted today that Republicans have no grounds for articles of impeachment against President Obama.”
Both video and transcript were shown of that interview; here’s the transcript, from ABC News, “This Week,” on Sunday:
STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the other things you see coming out of this are more and more calls for the president to be impeached, Sarah Palin most prominently this week. Any articles of impeachment would be drawn up by your committee. Is this something you’re considering? Or do you agree with Speaker Boehner who says it’s off the table?
GOODLATTE: We are not working on or drawing up articles of impeachment. The Constitution is very clear as to what constitutes grounds for impeachment of the president of the United States. He has not committed the kind of criminal acts that call for that.
Easley notes: “Republicans have been calling for this president to be impeached for things that George W. Bush did. Currently, some Republicans want to impeach Obama for Bush’s immigration policy. It never stops.” And he is correct about that: doing it would be impeaching him “for things that George W. Bush did.” And that’s why Republicans really don’t want to do it.
On June 17th, Sam Stein of Huffington Post headlined similarly, “What Do Top Republicans Fear? Hint: It’s Not An Obama Impeachment Vote,” and he reported that, “At a briefing at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, top officials from the major GOP campaign committees were in a cheerful mood. The president’s approval rating has been teetering on the edge of the toilet seat for several months. [Actually, polls show it’s sunk into the toilet.] Generic congressional ballot polls … toward this fall’s elections look good for Republicans.” A typical RNC member told Stein: “We’ve been given a good playing field; now we’ve got to go out and do the things we are supposed to do from an RNC perspective.” Stein asked him about impeaching Obama: “An impeachment could happen, right?” he asked. The answer: “Well, it’s not going to.” Another of them addressed that same question by saying: “I think Speaker [John] Boehner addressed the impeachment issue pretty aggressively [in the negative]. So I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
Congressional Democrats would be idiots not to address Obama’s impeachment, because their addressing it is the only way they’d not be tied to (as Easley put it) “things that George W. Bush did.” And it’d force congressional Republicans to show that they are (or else cause them to vote for impeaching Obama for his being George W. Bush II, which he has been).
If Democrats don’t do that, then Barack Obama really is a Democrat, and so, all progressives should then simply abandon that Party, and start their own Progressive Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party then stands for nothing at all.
A Progressive Democratic Party could then campaign against both of the other two as being “the two conservative Parties.” Voters would then be able to choose between the Progressive Democratic Party, or else one of the two conservative Parties – the latter two would then be splitting the conservative vote. The Progressive Democratic Party would have a real chance to win.
Given this possibility (not necessarily a bad one, but it would be bad for today’s Democrats in Congress), today’s congressional Democrats would stand a far higher likelihood of winning in 2014 if they instead simply push now for Obama’s impeachment and subsequent prosecution.
They have their choice to make. And we voters will have ours. But if they choose to be one of two conservative Parties, we voters will then need to form our own Progressive Democratic Party, in order to restore the Party that Franklin Delano Roosevelt built and that the Clintons and Obama have destroyed. Because, if Democrats do not impeach and prosecute Obama, then today’s Democratic Party is certainly not that, at all — it is not progressive, and it will need to be reborn, in order for democracy itself to be meaningful at all in today’s America, because, right now, there is no choice but merely two conservative Parties: two Parties that oppose accountability.
As I have said before: Without accountability, there is nothing but dictatorship. That’s the reality of our situation. The people who possess power without accountability are our dictators: they stand above the law; we stand below the law, as their subjects, no longer as authentically American citizens, for they have stolen our democracy from us, and made it into their own kingdom, instead. This is not America; and for us to accept it as if it were, would be for us to defile our great Founders, who waged their Revolution in order to defeat such tyrants – tyrants who now have come back from the dead, only with different faces and names. Our Founders would be in horror to see them. We need to be as progressive as they were. Their Revolution is now in tatters.
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.