The Good Gonzalez

John Nichols of The Nation, about five minutes into this video of the Q&A segment of an impeachment seminar at Dartmouth on 26 November, talking about Democratic Representative Henry B. Gonzalez, who Nichols says brought articles of impeachment against every president who started a war without a congressional declaration.

He was the chairman of the Banking Committee. His fellow Democrats hated him for doing it.

He went to the floor in 1987 when the Democrats were looking at Iran-contra, and he said: “You know, we have to impeach Ronald Reagan and George Bush for Iran-contra. They have clearly violated their oaths of office. They have clearly assaulted the Constitution.”

All the other Democrats said: “Don’t do it. We’re doing so great politically that we’ll just sit back and give them a little slap on the wrist and in 1988 we will sail through to victory because the people will realize the high crimes and misdemeanors, the sins of the Regan and Bush years.”

And of course, we know from the success of Mr. Dukakis’s presidency how wise they were.

h/t to NH Ex-pat at Blue Hampshire.