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IN A SEMI-PUBLIC chat the other day (a couple of weeks before the Nov. 4, 2008 election) where former Iowa Governor and perhaps the earliest candidate (except for Hillary Clinton, who'd been running since 1994 or so) for the Democratic nomination for President Tom Vilsack offered comments to & took questions from a group of fellow alumni who gathered near The Milk Bottle (a South Boston landmark) in the Children's Museum, I asked the silly:
QUESTION: "How do we hold our elected officials to account — to honor their oaths of office--that 'support and defend the US Constitution' thing'?"
Tom (I can call him Tom by virtue of having been in the Hamilton undergrad class nine years ahead of him — when it was an all men's school — and his spouse and coordinate Kirkland alumna Christie Bell Vilsack — and perhaps even because I graduated from Albany Law School/ Union University five years ahead of him), gave this:
ANSWER (with some modest attempt at an apology for the lameness (my word) of the answer in advance of making it): To the effect of "Well, you can vote."
Now, I didn't lead the witness by asking, "Is impeachment the only way we can hold our elected officials to account — to honor their oaths of office in the face off rampant, subversive, illegal and even unconstitutional conduct by any/all/some of 'our' elected officials?"
I thought Gov. Vilsack might just have suggested, without prompting, that impeachment could be, perhaps, at least one of a modest array of potential remedies — an array including criminal prosecution (accessory to a crime after the fact for congressfolk who aided and abetted criminal conduct), censure, removal from committee posts.
Impeachment, after all, is mentioned in the Constitution. And Tom did have the standard one-semester course in Constitutional Law that I had, I believe. And I'm certainly aware of the remedy.
But I gather that impeachment has now been so discredited by the Republicrats in their--gosh, what to call their Anti-Clinton efforts dragged out over eight years and at a cost of millions of dollars — FAR more millions than were invested in investigating 9/11, come to think of it? that Demicans and Republicrats both have no stomach for it — no urge to purge, if you will (to use one of Cheney's favorite vamps that he tends to use as he's about to slide a real humdinger of a lie past someone).
I suppose it's hard to define subversion of the constitution, abuse of process, failure to see that the laws be faithfully executed (and not by a firing squad or "signing veto"), perjury, subornation of perjury, criminal violations of FISA ($10,000 fine max, 5 years in prison, or both), of the US War Crimes Act (18 USCode §2441 — with penalties up to and including the death sentence), disgusting, venal, interest-group-funded (by Mr. Richard "Spit the Pit, Water" Mellon Scaife, principally — good for Hillary for cottening up to him and Lindsay Graham, too, by golly! True grit and absolutely total mastery of the gag reflex (they used to say that about Linda Lovelace, as I recall--but not in a political context), but after living in this country for 66 years--some along Route 66, even! — and serving in Vietnam as a "damned citizen-soldier," as three high-ranking officers described the status of draftee to me, I know it when I see it.
[Pretty amusing that the "Media In The Middle of The Polluted River" (or "mainstream media") were this week offering little "Where Are They Now" pieces on Deep Throat The Movie. But was it art imitating life, or life imitating art? Or was it a question of, "Which came first: The chicken or the yeggs?"]
And I've been seeing this political subversion for some seven-plus really rotten years, beginning with the swearing-in of the nation's first Supreme-Court-Appointed president ever, and all the days thereafter. (Excuse me for a moment while I get some Klepto-Abysmal for my terminal dyspepsia. (Hey, weren't the Disney folks cute when they named their Aladdin character Abyss Mal? A little something for the moms 'n' dads, hey?).
Ahh. That's better.
On the priorities scale, though, I'm TOTALLY baffled why hardly a single one of the 535 members of congress — that's 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House, as I recall — doesn't bat an eyelash about the deaths of 4,200-&-counting US troops, the "collateral" deaths of possibly one million-and-counting Iraqi citizens, but just can't seem to bestir themselves over the death of the Constitution, that "piece of paper" we're supposedly "exporting" to the Middle East. I mean, if the latter is destroyed, there's nothing to export to the former, no?
Or have I been trapped by logic once again?
The Republicrats WERE able to bestir themselves to "rescue" Terry Schiavo — and what a Vote Opera THAT was! I think it even broke new scientific ground in heuristic remote medical diagnosis with former Sen. Bill Frist, MD's amazing performance in the case.
So, that was the rather sharply circumscribed life of one very comatose person. Amazing that it actually brought the boys 'n' girls back to D.C. for a special session and even had the pres. set aside is good-ol-boy agricultural props for the nonce.
But for 500,000 or so Iraqi tykes starved and dysenteried-to-death by 11 years of a US export-import blockade (1991 to 2003--have you heard about it?), maybe 5 million Iraqis forced out of their homes and into exile--and, oh yeah, maybe a million or more Iraqis done in by the 95% of our bombs, rockets, missiles, grenades that are NOT "smart"--the number is so large and so completely unreported ("We don't do body counts"--Gen'l. Tommy Franks' line, wasn't it?) that, y'know, it just slides down the slippery slope from the "top of mind" and ends up wedged against the medulla and the brain stem.
You know it's there, sort of — a kind of niggling sensation, poking at your inner alligator and making it/you snappish — but it's completely escaped from the hippopotamus wallowing in the almond pit — where it would probably have gotten squashed into oblivion, anyway (the amygdala and hippocampus, ain't it?).
SIMPLE REMEDY PROPOSED:
Repeal the statutes requiring elected and appointed officials to take an oath of office; amend Article II, §1 ¶6 of the constitution to take out the president's "to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution," however lame or non-existent that ability may be, and Article VI, ¶3, which specifies that all other officials (federal and state, too, it turns out) must swear (or affirm) that they, too, will support and defend the US Constitution.
That way, idiots such as myself who think an oath of office means at least 25 years of relatively consistent conformity to a promise ("I will love, honor and obey...'til death--or 25 years, whichever comes first--doth us part") won't get their skivvies in a knot when the People's highest-ranking employees just plain ignore oaths, treaties, laws, the Constitution. And not an accursed or even blessed soul seems to care.
Under this revised regime I propose, if officials who make it to Washington, state capitols, federal and military offices, etc., still want to have some kind of little "This Is My First Day In Office" photo-op, they can just hold up some treasured object, child, set of car-keys, 24 house keys, whatever, and recite something like this:
I'm Joe The President [or whatever title is pertinent], and you're not. I'll be swilling in the public trough and lining my pockets at your expense for the next [two, four, five, six--whatever the term of office] years. You let me buy my way into office, so you got what you deserve. Me.So help me, ... to whatever is not nailed down.
Sounds like a plan.
But not in a good way.
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Some sources on US oath(s) of office:
Federal Civil "servants" here.
Members of Congress:
The House of Reps here; and
The Senate here. (Not to be too cynical, it's amusing to note the sanctimonious, patriotic bullshit that is packaged with descriptions of these useless oaths. Here's one from the Senate page linked above:
In 1884, a new generation of lawmakers quietly repealed the first section of the Test Oath, leaving intact today's moving affirmation of constitutional allegiance.
Enlisted or conscripted soldiers here, under "Oath of Enlistment (for enlistees)".
Commissioned (by the President, no less! Wowser!!) Officers here, under "Oath of Office (for officers)". (Note that officers in the US military, unlike their non-commissioned "brethren and sistern," do NOT swear to support and defend the President; their oath goes to "a higher authority," namely, the US Constitution. Curious, ain't it?).
Supreme Court justices (and all other federal judges) actually have to take TWO oaths of office. The first is to be good judge doobies, as set out by 28 USCode §453, and the second, to actually support and defend the Constitution, as set out by 5 USCode §3331.
And last — yes, and that, too (least), the President own little oath, here. (It's the 6th un-amended paragraph or clause (8th in original); Amendments XII and XXV changed some of the workings of the electoral college and of the presidential succession, respectively.
In case your mouse digit is having a low-mercury day, here's the oath itself, anyway:
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.
Seems pretty straight-forward, clear, unambiguous, you'd think, wouldn't you?
The requirement that other officers also take an oath is set out in Article VI, ¶3 this way:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution….
