I have never taken seriously the various movements to impeach George Bush, either as policy or politics, for several reasons. The main one is that I think President Dick Cheney, as official rather than shadow President, would be even worse than Bush. I no longer believe this to be the case.

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

I believe that Cheney, for all his many faults, understands better how to implement a democratic tyranny than Bush does, and would never be quite so incompetent, nor stupid enough to so overtly betray that incompetence. Cheney would not be surrounded by concentric filters to keep scary information away from him until the last minute. Cheney would have been able to understand on Saturday what was about to happen, rather than spending an additional four days reading The Pet Goat playing guitar and eating cake.

It's time for us all to understand that dangerous incompetence is worse than dangerous competence every time. Even if it takes until 2007, which would potentially allow Cheney to reign for close to a full decade, Bush must be removed for our own safety. Whatever comes next -- be it the big one in San Francisco, more massive blackouts in the northeast, a midwest shock freeze or a major terrorist attack -- we are not ready, and we never will be with Bush as President.

[LATE UPDATE: Turns out Cheney stayed on his vacation at least through Wednesday as well. Still, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees" has kind of a "If the President does it it's not illegal" ring to it.]