How bad is it?
Damn bad, I think.
I also think this has been happening under the media's radar so far, which means that many people in the US have no idea what's about to hit them.
Here is the core of the problem - Bush will not back down.
Not only is he a stubborn silly lightweight with a long history of escalations that have reliably required bail-outs by grown-ups, and not only is the Bush team veined and oily with fantasists like Cheney and Fielding who are committed to an executive without limits, but there's also the simple reality that if the facts emerge, everyone on the team is toast.
There's enough out in the open to keep criminal proceedings ticking over for a decade or two, just to collect and collate all of the crimes that have already been admitted.
It's a reasonable guess - not a dead certainty, but not unrealistic either - that there's a lot more we don't yet know about.
So Bush can't afford to back down. It's really not an option he can seriously consider.
This means there are only two possible outcomes, and the US political machine is now in one of the tightest corners ever, possibly since the Civil War.
Option 1 means the Dems back down. This has the unfortunate side-effect of making it clear that the Rule of Law and the Constitution are no longer valid as the basis of government. It's an admission that politics is now partisan and run for personal profit, and that there are no longer any grown-ups around, so anything goes. The President and his cronies are not just theoretically but in every possible way above the reach of the law, and no one can do anything about this.
This inevitably leads to a serious of even uglier escalations. If no one sets limits, Bush will simply carry on pushing them. No one knows how far he's willing to take that. But the precedents so far are not encouraging.
He may simply decide to sit out his watch and not do much. But that's not a safe bet, and if he railroads Congress he's going to be emboldened on Iraq, on promoting faith-based funding, on abortion laws, on further voter suppression, and on trying above all to maintain his petty little profitable interests for as long as possible - perhaps into the next presidency, if there's any way at all to arrange that by anointing a successor.
That's possibly a generous reading. At best it means that the Iraq War continues, people continue to die for no reason, and the economy drifts closer and closer to the rocks with no one's hand on the tiller.
At worst - no one knows. But I don't think it's something that most people are going to want to find out about first hand.
Option 2 means the Dems don't back down. The only possible result now is two armed groups trying to face each other down as both try to carry out the orders of their respective political heads. This isn't fantasy - it's a very real possibility. If one armed force tries to enforce subpoena power and another armed force tries to resist it, you have a very ugly situation, with the government and the military forced to split along fault-lines of loyalty.
Depending on how trigger happy everyone is, there may be actual shooting. I would hope that cooler heads prevail and it won't come to that, but at the very least there is now a complete Constitutional grid-lock with two of the branches of government no longer communicating with each other.
Bush of course always has the option of attempting to preempt this outcome. He can do it by opting for a Nixonian resignation - which I think is unlikely.
Or he can do it by attempting to dissolve Congress on a pretext. This fits far better with his monarchic aspirations. Dissolving parliaments is a time-honoured, and occasionally even successful, tactic used by kings whenever the commoners and minor lords become too demanding and difficult.
According to Toby Bartels there is already a clause in the Constitution which makes it possible for the President to adjourn both houses.
From Article II, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution:
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper;
Now, obviously this doesn't in any way give Bush the right to close down government. But for someone who is already grasping for dictatorship - if only by partisan default, rather than grand design - it offers at least as much of a legal fig-leaf as the concept of Executive Privilege does. And we already know how that's being used.
As always, it's the intention that matters. The legal details are just a convenient smoke screen to slow down the opposition and put them on the defensive.
Is there a third way? There is no guaranteed solution here. But there is an alternative that could put Bush on the defensive - and that's impeachment.
Starting trial proceedings now with the backing of both Houses makes it that much harder for Bush to squirm his way out of hearings. It also carries a weight of historical precedent which is much harder to ignore than run of the mill committee sessions.
From the Bush point of view, contempt of Congress really means contempt for Democrats. It's a viciously partisan and personal position, and his attitude to further hearings is going to continue to be 'You can't make me - you, and what army?'
Starting impeachment now - not never, not later when there's a cast-iron legal case, but now, immediately, right in the present moment - means that Bush has to accept that hearings are no longer just a partisan issue.
It also means that if Bush wants to stare down an impeachment committee - which is something he may seriously consider - it makes it that much harder for his potential supporters in the government and military to claim that they're acting patriotically.
So we're left with this conclusion - impeachment is the only weapon left now that can prevent a possible meltdown of the entire government.
After today's proceedings, if it were up to me, I'd be smacking it down on the table so hard that the noise will be heard all the way over at 1600 Penn Ave.