Reposted from May 9, 2006, and updates a story we published in June 2005.

That Nancy Pelosi could become the first female president of the United States next year is one of the longest long shots going in the current political environment. Nonetheless, it remains a technical possibility — and even a practical reality — if President Bush and Vice President Cheney were to decide to tough it out to the end of their impeachments in a Democratic controlled Congress in 2007.

We first wrote about this last June, back when the idea that impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney was all but unthinkable except to a few liberal extremist Bush haters.

Now about half of country would favor impeachment if there was reasonable cause to believe the president has broken the law. (And Bush has broken at least 750 laws, so take your pick.) And about a third favor impeaching the president based on what they know now, which is 7 percentage points higher than the number who wanted to impeach President Clinton in 1998.

I was reminded of my musings a year ago about possibility that Nancy Pelosi could become president when I saw this article Sunday at Ice Station Tango:

Impeachment is meaningless unless both Bush and Cheney go down. If Cheney stays in place the goal of the impeachment movement seems that much more daunting. Two impeachments?

Keeping Cheney is the equivalent of the Republican party going all in. If Bush and Cheney are impeached and removed, then the Presidency likely falls to Nancy Pelsoi. Convenient for a Rovian administration that has already successfully smeared her. Impeachment would then be a choice between someone Republicans call an “uber-liberal” and “staying the course. Could be a problematic frame for the impeachment movement.

If Democrats re-take the House this fall (and that is a big “if”), Pelosi will become the first female Speaker of the House. In that position, she would also be third in line to become president.

If Democrats also take control of the Senate (an even bigger “if”), the odds that the president and vice president will be impeached become all but a dead cinch.

Assuming all those conditions fall in place, we might expect that Bush and Cheney would follow the course set by the previously most corrupt presidential administration: Cheney would resign as Nixon’s vice president, Spiro Agnew, did, and the party elders would force a new vice president onto Bush without consulting him — someone like John McCain.

With McCain in place as VP, Bush would be forced to resign, clearing the way to the McCain ascendancy.

But President Bush is not a student of history, as we have learned, and everything we have seen about his temperament indicates he would hold out until the end — that he and Cheney would fight the impeachment every step of the way, stubbornly refusing to give testimony and evidence, ignoring the entreaties of the party elders to do as Nixon did and fall on their swords, only to become the first president and vice president to be removed from office by impeachment.

Which scenario sounds more like them: falling on their swords for the good of their party and nation — or toughing it out to the bitter end, even though they know they are guilty?