ME: I want you talk to talk about where you see the… in your remarks, it seems like there’s kind of a tension between winning the next election and the principles or the, uh, pragmatic goals of liberalism. Uh, when you answered about impeachment before, you very nearly had me deciding well maybe I’m not a liberal, because it seems to me like there’s a tension between drawing bright lines about the Constitution, about the rule of law, and deciding that S-CHIP or the next election is more important. Where do you see that line being drawn, where does the rule of law and a, uh, completely, uh … an administration devoted to lawbreaking, practically, where does that come in as far as defining yourself as a liberal?

FAMOUS LIBERAL ON BOOK TOUR – You know I have a lot of trouble thinking of any principles that I hold more dearly than defeating George Bush in 2000 (2008?) , in the election … [audience laughter] seriously! I think that principles are a form of vanity. Of moral vanity. I think principles are a very useful teaching method for children. I think… but… I have two problems with principles. One is that whatever principle you have I have a competing principle for the same situation. So when you say I’m doing this on principle I can tell you “but there’s another principle that’s at work in the same situation and you’re violating that principle.” So I think principles are what people do instead of making difficult decisions.

(Transcript of complete exchange here). I hadn’t planned to get into this debate with the author last week. But when he smacked down a prior questioner with much the same stuff (Ralph Nader, lessons for his nine year old), I got a little upset and tried to learn whether liberals, in his view, have any bottom line whatsoever besides building a winning coalition for the next step in social programs.

As I wrote in my blog about this last week,

By now I’m somewhat resigned to the fact that my opinions about impeachment seem to be a minority opinion within the cognoscenti and silverbacks of the Democratic Party; it’s not just [FAMOUS LIBERAL], it’s commenters at Obsidian Wings, it’s the largely silent liberal wing of the legal profession and academia, it’s Harold Meyerson, it’s Van Hollen, it’s Pelosi, it’s Conyers.

Yet I’m not quite resigned to that not being the liberal position, or at least the sensible one. Between the author — for all his accomplishments — and, say, George McGovern, or Elizabeth Holtzman, I’d say there’s room for doubt whether supporting impeachment is mere “moral vanity” or a principled stand worth taking by liberals, whether the rewards are immediate or not.

Even on a narrow, tactical, political or efficiency grounds the fear of impeachment may have been misplaced. Congress actually can walk and chew gum at the same time — legislation considered and passed by the same 93d Congress that sent Nixon packing included bills like the Employment Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the War Powers Resolution, Vietnam Veterans Adjustment Act, the Endangered Species Act, and many more.*

But the strategic cost is higher, to ourselves and those who would allegedly “suffer” if impeachment had been attempted. The rule of law is no mere luxury — especially in tough times. The confidence that the powerful will be brought to justice, too, is part of what makes a democracy work, especially when the gap between the powerful and the poor is widening by the hour. While the poor are deprived even of bankruptcy, the rich can count on the Federal Reserve bailing them out over the weekend; while a kid can be sent off in handcuffs for eating french fries on the subway, the president and vice president may break laws only to have a pliant Congress offer to retroactively rewrite them.

Democrats and liberals have all too plainly been counting on a win in 2008, and have dealt away much of their honor and self-respect in the process of waiting for that blessed event — which may not come. But even if there is a President Obama or a President Clinton next January 10, the value of that victory has already been tarnished by their party’s — and its apologists — craven refusal to hold the most powerful lawbreaker and political criminal in the land to account.

And our country’s future is endangered by it. Just as figures like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Abrams crawled forth from the darkness before, unpunished, unchastened, and hungry for as much power as they could get, so too will the Addingtons and Yoos of tomorrow. By failing to oppose them now, we’ve guaranteed there will be little perceptible “downside” to advancing the most absurd, pernicious doctrines imaginable — as long as there’s a president stupid and/or unscrupulous enough to listen. Any bets how long before the next one of those?

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* And that may not be the half of it. David Swanson (of AfterDowningStreet.org) told me once that Daniel Ellsberg believes it was precisely the threat of impeachment that softened Nixon up to sign so much of the legislation he did, or fail to oppose it with the same vehemence he might have. In other words, the invertebrate Nancy Pelosi may have doomed cherished initiatives like S-CHIP precisely when she illegitimately took impeachment off the table. I include this as a footnote since I couldn’t pin down an online citation for this; call it “personal communication.”