Just over a year ago, the Plattsburgh Common Council approved a resolution that effectively called for investigation into the impeachment of the president. Like similar resolutions passed by many Vermont towns, Plattsburgh's resolution focused on the Iraq War, and on the familiar and now discredited claims that the administration used to launch that war.

We might expect linkage to an increasingly unpopular war to work in favor of impeachment. But the opposite seems to have been the case. Earlier this month, for example, Vermont's new congressman, Peter Welch, said he opposes impeachment because he thinks it would merely prolong the Iraq War.

As long as impeachment is linked to Iraq, it will fail to gain wide support. To those who think like Peter Welch, the more desperately tragic the situation in Iraq becomes, the more urgently it seems necessary to fix the problem, not the blame, to unite rather than engage in partisan politics, and to focus on the future, not the past. Given the appalling carnage in Iraq, such thinking on the part of our elected officials is well intentioned.

But it is also flawed and irresponsible.

Impeachment is not about Iraq. It's about America. Specifically, it's about our Constitution. That means that impeachment is not a partisan issue at all, but one vital to all Americans, whatever their politics. It means that it's not really about the past, either. Impeachment is about the future of our democracy.

Equally, it's also about the honor of our leaders.

I'll make it as simple as I can. Even conservatives now widely acknowledge that this president has attacked the Constitution. All public officials swear an oath to defend the Constitution. At this point, every public official in this country who wishes to remain honorable faces a choice. From town-council members to cabinet officers, and certainly including Congress, the burden is now on them either to deny that this president has attacked the Constitution (a tougher sell every day), or to support impeachment.

Otherwise, they should admit the reality that they are flagrantly breaking their oath of office.

The Constitution itself mandates the oath, just a paragraph above George Washington's signature, in what is essentially the document's conclusion: "The senators and representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by an oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution" (Article VI).

Impeachment is the Constitution's self-defense mechanism. The oath is supposed to be its trigger. It was put there by people who trusted that it would be taken seriously.

Plattsburgh's Common Council members honorably lived up to their oath a year ago, which took some courage in a conservative region like ours. I was at that crowded Common Council meeting, and I heard one conservative member of the council give his reasons for changing his mind and supporting the resolution. Those reasons did not have to do with Iraq, despite the resolution's emphasis on the war. They had to do with the Constitution.

What about other towns in the North Country? Will they follow Plattsburgh's example? Will their town board members live up to their oath, too?

Town boards may think that their duties are limited to maintaining local public works and coming up with a yearly budget. "It's not our place," goes one common objection from local officials who wish (understandably, perhaps!) to be let off the hook. But they didn't swear an oath to fix potholes, important as such local business may be. They swore an oath to support the Constitution, and unless those were empty words, the time has come to hold them to it.

Supporting an impeachment resolution in your community is the way to do that. And despite another complaint commonly made by town-board members who wish to evade their only sworn duty, such resolutions do make a difference. They are heard in Washington, because the Constitution says that hearing them is part of Congress's job. This is the Constitution's way of defending itself when our national leaders fail to live up to their oaths. (What about it, Chuck Schumer? Hillary Clinton?)

But it relies on local leaders, and so it also relies on us, the people, to give our local leaders the political support they need.