How would you have felt if Clinton had been prosecuted for perjury after he left office? After all, the evidence was on tape. The guy clearly committed a felony. Why wasn’t he prosecuted like the hundreds of people who were in federal prison, at that moment, for lying about sex?

I know you’re not talking about a coup. That’s what I’m trying to get you to see. There will be a coup if we go down this road. Maybe not by Bush, or Obama, but within the next decade or two. In countries where political leaders are prosecuted after they leave office it behooves them to never leave office. The reason we’ve always had orderly transitions of power is precisely because we don’t prosecute former presidents. It’s not that I prefer to live in a totalitarian state with term limits – it’s that the prosecution you’re advocating will bring us inevitably to that totalitarian state.

Imagine it from a president’s point of view. Let’s say I’ve been president for eight years, there have been a few scandals as there always are. The public is tired of my party and my political enemies are set to take over when I leave office. As a country we’ve had that situation several times in the last 100 years, and the president always steps down and writes his memoirs, or goes skydiving, or stumps for AIDS programs in Africa. Whatever.

In a country where the norm is payback by your political enemies, as president I have nothing to lose by staging a coup. My opponents are gonna throw me in jail anyway, so I may as well declare a state of emergency (a crisis like the recent financial crisis would do nicely), suspend the constitution (temporarily, of course), and put off elections for six months. Then another six months, then another.

Oh, that just couldn’t happen in the US. Why not? This is something that happens over and over all over the world on a regular basis. Do you think our leaders are less power-hungry than politicians anywhere else? Just like you didn’t believe the Clinton impeachment was done in good faith, half the country doesn’t believe any Bush prosecution would be done in good faith. And when Republicans prosecute Obama you, again, won’t believe it’s in good faith. How long do you think that will go on without consequences?

I believe it is possible to invest, as a society, in processes whereby our leaders are held accountable for criminal conduct, if, indeed, they are legitimately suspected of committing criminal conduct.

Your comments indicate that rather than live in a society where standards of conduct for our leaders are enforceable and enforced, you prefer to live in a totalitarian state, just with term limits, where our leader has the right to act pretty much however he or she likes, with the only consequence being that they lose the office at the end of their term, if their criminal actions are such that they lose popularity and are not re-elected.

And who’s talking about a coup? I’m talking about legitimate criminal prosecution.

The place to exercise your standards is at the ballot box. And “inconvenient and chaotic” is gross understatement. It’s the road to civil war, with all that entails. Do you think there’ll be more justice after a coup? My isn’t that we shouldn’t have standards for elected officials. My point is the legal process is the wrong way to impose standards.

I have no problem, none, with good faith investigation and prosecution of any president who has done the things you claim. Good faith being the key, of course.

And what fantasy land do you propose to live in where this would happen? For that to work, not only do you need a good faith investigation, it also needs to be seen by everyone in the political spectrum as a good-faith investigation. I don’t see how that comes even close to happening in the real world. Did you see the Clinton impeachment as a good-faith process?

Good question. So, your answer is pretty much, as long as the President is acting within his or her 8-year term limit, no? Because that’s how all our presidents have acted?

How about having higher standards for our leaders, instead of saying, “Billy got to do it, and he got away with it, so you can’t punish me now because it would be inconvenient and chaotic to hold all our presidents to such a standard.”

And as I recall, the International Convention on Human Rights has been signed and ratified by the U.S. And there are lots of possible violations of U.S. statutory law that aren’t necessarily constitutional.

I have no problem, none, with good faith investigation and prosecution of any president who has done the things you claim. Good faith being the key, of course.

International law is absolutely meaningless to the extent it wasn’t signed by the president and ratified by Congress. Most provisions of the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to irregulars – under international law we can pretty much do whatever we want to them. International provisions against torture are pointless since there’s no useful legal definition of torture. Is waterboarding torture? I don’t think so.

Shall we prosecute Congressmen for abusing the commerce clause, or judges for ignoring the plain text of the Constitution? Or for dreaming up text that isn’t there?

I suppose I shouldn’t care very much, not having kids and being in relatively poor health. I’ll probably be gone before the worst happens, though I suspect Obama will take us about halfway there if elected. I’m really sort of morbidly curious whether you realize this ball isn’t going to stop rolling once you start it. You think you’re gonna put Bush in jail and that’s gonna be the end of it, right? Really? It won’t, you know. It just breaks a very practical taboo. Après Bush le déluge.

In my life there hasn’t been a single president, with the possible exception of Ford, that couldn’t have been sent to jail for things he did, provided you apply the same standards you intend to apply to Bush. Did you know the so-called “warrantless wiretapping” started under Carter and continued during the tenure of all succeeding presidents? So if Bush goes to jail for that, we’ll have to lock Carter, GHW Bush, and Clinton up too.

Reagan and GHW Bush had Iran-Contra.

Clinton blew up an pharmaceutical factory in Sudan to divert attention from Monica. Can you imagine how many people probably died as a result? I mean, a country as poor as Sudan finally builds a factory to make medicines its people can’t afford and BOOM – blown up over a BJ. And that was without a Congressional authorization, something Bush had in Iraq. Then there were the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis that died under sanctions, and the thousands of Somali civilians killed in Mogadishu during the “Blackhawk Down” thing. My God, what is Clinton doing enjoying retirement when he should be facing charges at the Hague?

Not a hypothetical question.

Eric:
Criminalize policy differences, no. Punish criminal violations of the US constitution, and international law, as adopted by the US, yes. So sad that your camp doesn’t recognize the difference. Or, I guess, sad that for your camp, differences over torture and illegal searches and seizures are just policy differences.

That doesn’t change the fact that the claim is being put forward seriously that the only reason Powell supports Obama is their shared blackness. What part of that ISN’T racist? Do you think you get a pass because in your mind Powell was the racist first?

In your zeal to punish a president you believe overstepped the bounds of office, you’re going to force future presidents to do so in a very egregious way, as surely as night follows day. If Obama actually puts Bush administration officials into jail, for any reason, he’d best make sure the next cell over has a good view, since unless he successfully suspends the constitution he’ll surely be there in a few years. That road leads to civil war, eventually. Do you just not care?

No it’s not.

“Now NOTHING she says matters!” Now?

Is calling me (and every Nobama fan) a racist nonstop supposed to enlighten me or anyone in some way? How does this magical phenomenon supposedly work?

Though I still think he’d endorse McCain if it looked like McCain was about to win. Why else would he wait so long? It’s like waiting until the two-minute warning to bet on a football game.

“I have black friends” has never been a defense to racism. The reason that Democrats think the Powell nomination is interesting is because Powell is a Republican. The reason Republicans no longer think it is interesting is because he is black.

Even though the only reason most Dems are glad to have this endorsement is tactical, not out of any great love for Powell, I’ll give Gib his charge of hypocrisy; Obama could have rejected the endorsement of the guy who publicly made the case for war. I’ll need a better explanation of how this makes the Democrats the racists in this equation that the nonsense I’ve seen so far here and in the AN comments.

Right.

This might be true if we didn’t know Powell and hadn’t heard him rave about how amazing it would be to have a black president. And what other reason could someone like JC Watts have? He+Obama have near zero in common.

Now NOTHING she says matters!

Hanged, Pearatty. There goes that darn public edju-ma-kation again.

I really really genuinely hope so. No matter who goes down.

Cause if those investigations were going to happen, Powell would have to be on any genuine list of people being investigated, and I trust Obama will soon be reassuring people supporting such accountability that Powell will not be getting any special treatment whatsoever.

Had he been a man of stronger character, he wouldn’t have hung himself no matter how much rope Bush gave him. He is damaged, because his lack of character came to light when he allowed himself to be used by a president who lied.

In the alternative, let’s say, as Karol suggests, that he was completely taken in by the CIA WMD “evidence.” In that case, he just showed extremely poor judgment. That poor judgment came to light when he allowed himself to be used by a president who lied.

Either way, damaged goods.