Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I’d written him a month ago to explain why I’d never support him as long as he was so blindly opposed to impeachment. As a result, some staffer put me on their campaign mailing list, as if I was an actual supporter. After a month of that nonsense, I replied to one particularly presumptuous mass email from their campaign lead saying, essentially, WTF!

That finally got a response, and, apparently, from Sen. Obama himself. Now, I’m sure it’s just a form letter from his staff, as my name is not ‘friend’ and I’d actually written him about more than just impeaching Bush. But at least his campaign is addressing this issue to people who write in about it and trying to justify his position. That’s a start, though, as you’ll see below, it ultimately misses the mark.

Dear Friend,

Thank you for contacting me to share your thoughts on impeaching President George W. Bush. I appreciate and share your high level of dissatisfaction and frustration with the President, his actions and his priorities. I disagree with him on many issues, ranging from the war in Iraq to the future of Social Security to funding our children’s schools.

I support robust Congressional investigations into his administration and the highly questionable actions it has taken in areas such as domestic spying and the U.S. attorney firings. He has horribly mismanaged the rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Democratic Congress has achieved important progress this year, but we are still stymied by a President who is out of sync with the American people, vetoing legislation to responsibly get us out of Iraq and to support increased stem cell research.

America needs to move forward again, and I don’t believe that continuing this era of bitter partisanship is the best course of action. As I travel the country campaigning, I hear the call for a new direction and a change in our politics, a thirst for something more. I don’t believe impeachment answers this call. I believe if we begin impeachment proceedings we will be engulfed in more of the politics that has made Washington dysfunctional. We would once again, rather than attending to the people’s business, be engaged in a tit-for-tat, back-and-forth, non-stop circus.

Instead, I will continue to move forward with a positive agenda in the Senate and on the campaign trail. I hope you will stay involved and work for progress on the issues that matter most to you. Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

Okay. So what I still don’t understand is how you can be for investigations but opposed to consequences of those investigations…

What happens, Senator, when investigations show illegal activity? What happens when the President gets on national TV and admits to illegal activity? Do we do nothing, because it’s too partisan? Because it breaks the harmony we need? Because the 28% that would support BushCo even under torture (by BushCo!) would dislike you? Do they like you now?

I’d argue that it is fundamentally wrong to investigate if you don’t plan on acting on the results. If you really want to let sleeping dogs lie, then let them lie (and they do lie, repeatedly). Simply don’t investigate. In fact, get rid of the impeachment clause altogether if you don’t ever plan to use it, because it’s always going to be contentious.

And if you are not supporting a  key Constitutional provision simply because you don’t like the consequences, are you really any better than Mr. Cheney?

Here’s a hint: if you want to distinguish yourself from your opponents, say that you’d vote to convict _any_ President and/or Vice if the House first moves to impeach, and the subsequent investigations prove the allegations to your satisfaction. That at least shows you’re interested in putting the Rule of Law above party and image considerations.

The worst possible thing you can say is that you think crimes were committed, but you’re unwilling to do anything about it. That just shows that you’re unworthy to be President, because I can’t be sure you won’t just do the same as Bush. Please show me you get it, Senator.

Afterthought: How odd it is that if the GOP hadn’t gone overboard with impeaching Clinton, you wouldn’t be hearing all this "tit for tat" nonsense. It’s almost as if the GOP inoculated itself by being so bold and unwise. Yet, how odd it is that the next Democratic President could still be impeached, because that wouldn’t seem like tit-for-tat, just something the self-righteous Republicans do from time to time.

This is Watergate, Senator, not Whitewater. And in Watergate, even the old Republicans had enough spine to help end a crooked Republican administration. Nowadays, we have beautiful, multi-colored jellyfish on all sides of the aquarium.