The Impeachment Question

More than four in 10 Americans, according to a recent Zogby poll, say that if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through impeachment.

But you wouldn't know it from following the news. Only three mainstream outlets that I can find made even cursory mention of the poll last week when it came out.

You also wouldn't know it judging from the political discourse in Washington, but that makes a little more sense. After all, impeachment is for all practical purposes a political act, not a legal one. So with a Republican-controlled Congress that doesn't even like to perform basic White House oversight, it's basically a moot point.

Nevertheless, could there be anything that 42 percent of Americans agree on that the media care about so little?

The poll results certainly illustrate the intense polarization of the American electorate -- not exactly news.

But they also suggest an appetite for more investigation into Bush's reasons for war and specifically -- in light of the assertions in the Downing Street memos -- whether his public rationales were in fact at all like his private rationales.

One topic for further inquiry, for instance, could be whether in private conversations Bush expressed the same kind of reticence about war that he advertised publicly. Some evidence -- stories like this one in Time, which quotes Bush saying in March 2002: '[Expletive] Saddam. we're taking him out.' -- suggests otherwise.

Was Bush motivated more by personal animosity toward Saddam Hussein than by a post-Sept. 11 desire to protect America from a grave threat? Did he exaggerate that threat? At what point was war inevitable?

Those are not settled questions. And evidently quite a few Americans would like to see some accountability if Bush deceived them.

The Poll

The impeachment question was part of a Zogby International poll conducted early last week, and released on Thursday.

It found that Bush's job approval ratings had slipped a point from the previous week, to 43 percent.

But the jaw-dropper was that 42 percent said they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found that the president misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.