Yesterday I learned there were two Charlie Rangels. As a former prosecutor, Rangel believes Bush is a criminal who should be indicted and imprisoned. But as a Congressman, Rangel believes Bush should not be impeached because Americans would rally to his defense and his polls would rise and Republicans would win the 2008 elections.

Historically, Rangel's argument is contradicted by John Nichols' outstanding book The Genius of Impeachment, which found every time Congress tried to impeach a President of the opposite party, the party of Congress won the next election. As everyone knows, Richard Nixon's party lost the White House in 1976, and Bill Clinton's party lost the White House in 2000.

So why doesn't Rangel think impeaching Bush would lead to Democratic victory in 2008? Because Democrats like Rangel remember the Clinton impeachment differently. They believe Clinton's polls rose during his impeachment, and he ended up politically stronger - in other words, they believe Clinton's impeachment backfired on Republicans.

But even at this simplistic level, Rangel is wrong. Clinton's polls went up during the year he was impeached, but they dropped right after he was acquitted. And Clinton was damaged so badly that key Democrats didn't want him to campaign for Al Gore, even in Arkansas and West Virginia where he might have given Gore an Electoral College majority without Florida. (Whether Clinton would actually have helped or hurt Gore in those states is an unknown question.) 

Here are the polls for Clinton:

Clinton's first two years were rocky due to non-stop attacks from rightwing radio led by Rush Limbaugh, and the failure of Clinton's health care plan. This led to the Republican Revolution of 1994, in which Newt Gingrich's rightwingers took control of the House for the first time in 40 years. At first Clinton was on the defensive, plaintively insisting he was "still relevant," and his approval dropped near 40%. But then Gingrich declared war on Clinton and shut down the government, which led to Clinton's rebound. When Clinton was re-elected in 1996, his approval rating was around 60%.

News of Clinton's affair with Monica broke in January 1998. Republicans immediately went on the attack, and Clinton-hating rightwingers dominated the airwaves for an entire year. So what happened to Clinton's polls? They went up for the entire year that followed - the Starr Report, impeachment in the House, and finally the trial in the Senate.

Interestingly, when Clinton was finally acquitted, the "rally around the President" effect went away, and Clinton's polls dropped a bit. Clinton had bad months and good months, and he left office with his approval rating over 60%.

The other case study is Richard Nixon:

Despite the Vietnam War, Nixon's polls were strong throughout his first term, and peaked at 67% after his second inaugural. But when Congress began investigating Watergate in 1973, his polls plummeted until they fell below 30% in October, and for the following year they never recovered, until the House Judiciary Committee voted for Articles of Impeachment and Republican Senators convinced him to resign.

So why did Clinton's polls go up during impeachment, while Nixon's polls went down? The answer is simple: the American people were clearly able to distinguish between a valid impeachment based on real impeachable actions (the Watergate break-in and Nixon's subsequent coverup), and a partisan assault based on consensual sex.

So what about George W. Bush?

Bush started low in the polls because he actually lost the popular vote in 2000, and only became President after 5 partisan Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court voted to throw out 175,000 never-counted votes in Florida. As a result, millions of Americans continue to believe Bush stole the Presidency.

9/11/01 changed everything for Bush, and he reached 90% in two polls, something no President ever accomplished. But his polls began a steady decline, which was interrupted for a few months following the invasion of Iraq on March 19, 2003. But as the war continued into 2004, Bush's approval ratings hovered at break-even, until the Pentagon finally admitted there were no WMD's in Iraq, and Bush's approval fell to the low 40's. After Hurricane Katrina hit land on 8/31/05 and thousands were abandoned in New Orleans, Bush's polls fell down to the 30's, and they have continued declining to the point where Bush is now in the 20's.

Why has Bush fallen so far? Record gas prices are definitely a factor. So too is the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. But one of the reasons for Bush's decline in the first half of 2007 has been long-overdue Congressional hearings on the countless scandals of the Bush Administration, most notably Iraq and the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. If Rangel were right about a "rally around the President" effect, it would have begun during these hearings. But the opposite has happened - the more Americans learn about the inner workings of the Bush Administration, the less they like Bush.

This fact is underscored by the growing intensity of disapproval for Bush. While different polls measure intensity differently, the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (6/8-11/07) finds only 12% have "very positive" feelings towards Bush, while 42% have "very negative" feelings - a significant drop in the past six weeks.

Of course the polls that would really be useful would be polls that specifically asked about impeachment. Unfortunately the Corporate Media pollsters refuse to ask this question - because Karl Rove doesn't want the public to know how much the American people hate Bush and want him gone.

The few polls that have asked about impeachment (including those we've paid for) show strong support for impeachment, depending to a great extent on how the question is asked. If the question stresses investigation and impeachment hearings, a majority say yes. If the question stresses removal from office, a majority say no.

So what does that tell us? Americans believe Bush has committed impeachable offenses, and they wanted Democrats to investigate those offenses. Now that Democrats are several months into those investigations, do Americans believe Democrats are conducting fair and serious investigations, or do they think it's a raw partisan assault? Bush's continuing decline in the polls leads to only one conclusion: Democrats are "winning" the fight. 

One impeachment poll stands out from the others: when Newsweek asked in January if voters wished the Bush Presidency was "over," 58% said yes. If that question was asked again, it would certainly be over 60%. Democrats have nothing to fear from moving beyond investigations into actual impeachment. The American people can't wait until Bush is gone.