If I'm Nancy Pelosi, and there are so many ways in which I'm not, I'd step down as speaker of the house before any impeachment trial against a theoretical President Cheney. Not to pile onto the giant group hug of the late President Ford, but he was a creature of the House and belonged there; he accepted his president's call to serve as vice president, and ran again both for his party and for the same reason Truman ran in 1948 - to keep someone he perceived as more radical, like Bob Dole or "Scoop" Jackson from taking the office and making things worse.

Pelosi is untried and untested as speaker, but if that's the job she wants, she should not surrender it to take the White House, no matter how much pressure she'd feel to be the first woman president of the United States. Most Democratic house speakers don't have presidential ambitions, and I see nothing wrong with that. Let Pelosi step down with the intent of returning to the rostrum after a new speaker is selected to become the 44th president, should both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have to be removed from office. Let House members show their ambitions, make their cases, and build public support for their candidacy for the White House, so the process is more open. If Bush and Cheney must be removed from office, and starting war with Iran would certainly be cause for such removal, the replacement process should be as open as the statutes for the order of succession allow, and Pelosi should not feel obliged to become president if she thinks she can serve the country better in the House.