Will House Speaker Nancy Pelosi be the Next US President?

When the new US Congress takes over in January, and it starts holding hearings on the Bush Administration's conduct of the Iraq war, how it got the country into the war in the first place, the hunt for Osama, Katrina, secret meetings with energy firms, etc., eventually something pretty nasty could well turn up that has Bush and Cheney's fingerprints all over it. Who knows, maybe Rumsfeld will turn them in?

Imagine evidence of a deed so outrageous that public will demand impeachment. Imagine Republican Congressmen up for re-election in '08 having no choice but to buckle. I suspect the evidence is already almost there with regards to "waterboarding," a.k.a. torture; or pertaining to the manipulation of intelligence data prior to the Iraq war. Lying to get the country into a war is an impeachable offense in my view. So ought be violating the Geneva Conventions. But even if these charges don't inspire impeachment proceedings -- they certainly ought to -- something similarly damming or worse is liable to appear once the US Congress begins snooping around.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- second in line to the presidency according to the constitution -- would presumably be asked to take the oath of office, and become the first female president of the United States. It will be a great day for America and the planet. Nothing would do more to restore the US credibility and influence in the world than impeachment of both the president and the vice president, as it would signal to the world that the American people repudiate everything the administration has stood for.

The most important consequence of impeachment is that it would present an opportunity for more moderate Republicans to take back their party from the die hard Bush loyalists who dominate the GOP. Nowadays being a card-carrying Republican is synonymous with an ethic of blind and unquestioning followership of the Dear Leader. The leading Republicans seem to be unprincipled people who worship power and their proximity to power. Because few leading Republicans uphold any discernible set of principles, the party does not contribute to the democratic way of life. Even the good Republican Senator John McCain seems to have gotten the message that success within the Republican Party today necessitates convincing others that you are not a man of principle.

Impeachment is just the kind of shock therapy the party and country most needs. The public may soon have far more appetite for a democratic purge of this sort than the mainstream media is willing to entertain at present.

Will President Pelosi run for re-election in '08? Would Hillary Clinton try to prevent the impeachment so she herself doesn't lose what could be her last chance to run? You may one day have cause to recall that Jotman was among the first to have asked these questions.