The Ford Solution

The recent death of former President Gerald Ford remind sme that I never did offer to the public my solution to the looming political crisis of George W. Bush's impeachment.

Obviously, Bush has committed high crimes and misdemeanors sufficient to be impeached and removed from office. Just as obviously, Vice President Cheney has been involved in modst of them, as well as offenses of his own. But impeaching both of them would make Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi President, and many would view this as simply a Democratic power grab.

We will pass over in silence the irony of Republicans accusing anyone of stealing the Presidency.

Seriously, though, there is an alternative scenario for replacing a corrupt and incompetent President and Vice President. Let us call it the Ford Solution:

1) Cheney resigns.

2) Bush nominates a new Vice President, who is approved by Congress. This needs to be a person who has not been a member of the Administration, nor an advisor to it, but who is of sufficient public stature as to be acceptable as President. This person should be a Republican, so that there be no accusations of Bush being removed for purely political reasons. It should be a person who is not seen as likely to run for another term as President, to avoid the appearance of seeking an unfair advantage for either party in the 2008 election.

3) Bush resigns, and the appointed Vice President becomes President. The new President might or might not pardon Bush and Cheney. We could argue for decades over whether that would be the right thing to do, but what's most important is that we get rid of Bush and his entire crew and replace them with someone who is minimally acceptable in the job.

Aside from persuading the pigheaded, reality-denying Bush crew to go along with this scheme, the hardest part of it would be finding an acceptable new President to hold the office until 2009. To my way of thinking, there is really only one person, flawed though he is, who is really auited to this role:

Former President George Herbert Walker Bush.

I never thought I would endorse the gun-running, drug-running, dogleg-crooked CIA-spook bastard for another day in the Oval Office, but let's face it: he's smarter and more honest than Junior, he can't run in 2008 even if he wanted to, he's a prominent Republican who has never been so much as consulted by Bush or his people...he's the best possible choice.

God help us.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "The best is often enemy of the good."\\