Feingold thought the impeachment of Clinton was a "close case." Will he [View All]

call for the impeachment of George W Bush or is leading the United States into an illegal war and illegally spying on Americans not as close a case as efforts to avoid exposure of consensual sex? (I write this as someone who thinks that of all the Democrats making rumbles about running for President, Feingold is our best bet).

http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/02/12/senate.statements/feingold.html

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Having said that, the Presidential conduct in this case, in my view, does come perilously close to justifying that extreme remedy. There really have been three Presidential impeachments in our Nation's history. I see this one as being in the middle. The Andrew Johnson case is usually considered by historians to have been a relatively weak case. President Johnson had a different interpretation of the constitutionality of the statute that he believed allowed him to remove the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton. He was not convicted, and subsequently the U.S. Supreme Court, I believe, ruled that in fact that was constitutional. I see that as having been a relatively weak case.

The case of Richard Nixon, in my view, was a pretty strong case, involving a 1972 Presidential election and attempts to get involved with the aspects of that election--frankly--an attempt to cover up what happened during that 1972 election. I think that had more to do with core meaning of 'high crimes and misdemeanors.'

This is a closer case; this is a close case. In that sense, it may be the most important of the three Presidential impeachments, in terms of the law of impeachment, as we go into the future. I agree neither with the House managers who say their evidence is 'overwhelming,' nor with the President's counsel who says the evidence against the President is 'nonexistent.' The fact is, this is a hard case, and sometimes they say that hard cases make bad law. But we cannot afford to have this be bad law for the Nation's sake.

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