LAST December, Democratic congressman John Conyers issued a press release citing President George W. Bush for possible impeachable offences relating to his administration's conduct of the Iraq war.

Few took the missive that seriously and it received little attention. But in a little more than three weeks Conyers, who serves as the most senior Democrat on the House of Representatives judiciary committee, could be the leader of that committee if the Democrats win back the house after the mid-term elections on November 7.

And the judiciary committee is where any impeachment starts. Is it going to be payback time? Are the likes of Conyers going to start prosecuting the Bush administration from Congress, the so-called first branch of US government, designed for an oversight role of the White House? Will Conyers lead the push to impeach the President?

First, Democrats have to win. The polls this week were disastrous for the Republicans as voter dissatisfaction with the party plunges to two-decade lows. Two-thirds of American voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Bush's approval numbers have slumped again. He had been recovering, tracking up above 40 per cent last month, to suddenly slip back again to between 33 per cent to 37 per cent. And, among likely voters, 58per cent say they plan to vote for Democrats in November, as opposed to 37 per cent who say they will vote Republican, according to a CNN-Gallup poll.

At this point and barring surprises, Democrats are almost certain to take the House of Representatives. About 30 Republican seats are in play, while a gain of just 15 seats will get Democrats over the line.

In the Senate they need six seats, but only up to eight Republican seats are thought to be up for grabs. One Democratic seat looks competitive too, meaning a Senate win for the Democrats looks less likely. But even control of one chamber - the House of Representatives - gives the likes of Conyers the chance to start prosecuting the Bush administration.

Plenty of the Democratic faithful are hoping he will. The Democratic leadership, however, is not so sure. It seems it's not only Republicans who are sensitive to Conyers' talk of impeachment. Democratic powerbrokers have successfully shut down Conyers from making any further big stands on the issue. He has been studiously mute on impeachment since that original press release last December.

For good reason. Republicans have been looking for any opportunity to portray Democrats as preparing for two years of partisan payback if they take control of Congress. They know the thought of Congress mired in retribution does not go down well with an electorate already sour on Congress.

Instead, Democrats are ruling out impeaching Bush. "Absolutely," says Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats' ranking leader of the House of Representatives. "We don't have time for that."

What Democrats are promising is more oversight of the Bush administration, saying the Republican-controlled house and Senate have abrogated their responsibility and allowed the Bush administration an unprecedented power grab, consolidating executive power within the White House.

There's nonpartisan evidence to support this view. Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, respected congressional experts from Washington-based think tanks Brookings and the American Enterprise Institute, have written a book about how Congress is not living up to its original charter.

"What we were struck by during the Bush presidency was how supine the first branch of government was in responding to the President's aggressive denial of information that Congress thought was essential to its work," they write in their book, The Broken Branch.

"Members of both parties were quite open with us about the utterly dismissive attitude, indeed the contempt, with which Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney greeted such requests from Congress."

This kind of power grab started decades ago but has been reinforced in a post-9/11 world where Congress granted Bush wartime powers.

But rather than improving oversight, Republicans warn that a Democratic takeover of Congress would mean a big ideological change, leading to higher taxes and new spending.

And "when they talk about investigations and oversight", Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, told The New York Times last week, "I think Americans would prefer our generals to be fighting terrorists as opposed to fighting subpoenas".

And just how Democrats handle control of Congress - if they win - is also critical to the 2008 presidential campaign. Since the Democrats' presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton sits in the Senate, the focus is even more acute.

In fact, some prominent Democratic supporters say privately they would rather Democrats not win in November so that the US electorate can get even angrier with a Republican-dominated Congress, setting up a hoped-for Democratic sweep in 2008. Implicit, too, in that theory, is that it gives Democrats less opportunity to make a hash of it during the next two years.

America's opinion pages are beginning to fill with advice for the Democrats. David Ignatius, columnist in The Washington Post, wrote recently that Democrats might be talking about a culture of corruption in Washington "but what are they going to do about it?".

"That's the question Democrats should address over the next month if they want a mandate for change. If they win the House of Representatives, will the Democrats embark on a two-year binge of investigations and score-settling? Or will they get serious about solving the country's problems?"

Ignatius says if Democrats triumph, the challenge will be to "break out of the partisan straitjacket that constricts American politics".

And that's where Republicans have gone wrong. They took control of Congress in 1994 after 40 years in the wilderness promising to clean up Washington. Instead the past year has provided plenty of evidence that Republicans have become every bit as arrogant in power as Democrats were said to be.

The most recent example is the scandal involving former congressman Mark Foley, who stands accused of preying on schoolboys working in Congress as pages. Despite plenty of evidence Foley was being "overly friendly" with the pages, the Republican leadership did little to stop Foley or inform their Democratic colleagues of their concerns. The scandal is subject to several investigations.

But even with that leg-up in the past few weeks of the campaign, if Democrats win on November 7 they are still not expected to achieve the kind of majorities in Congress to give them the power to override a presidential veto on legislation.

So it's unlikely Democrats are about to champion a new age of liberalism with, for example, radical changes on the minimum wage or stem cell research. And one thing that has characterised the Democratic Party during the Bush years has been disunity, particularly on the war on Iraq.

So, instead, Democrats are saying little and trying to present as small a target as possible. Sure, they would pursue the pet topics: try to raise the minimum wage a bit, throw a bit more money at tertiary education assistance and make changes to the Bush administration's controversial federal prescription drug program, which has lifted the cost of drugs to senior citizens.

But is a partisan witch-hunt on the cards? Congressman Pete Stark, a liberal Democrat from California, says the 2008 presidential contest will be a "major moderating influence" on how Democrats handle themselves if they seize power.

"I don't think we're going to run out and impeach Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Bush, although a lot of my constituents would like to," he told The New York Times.

For his part, Bush is relentlessly optimistic. During an hour-long press conference in the Rose Garden at the White House this week he was asked how he thinks the Republican Party will fare in the mid-term congressional elections. He said he was confident Republicans will hold the House of Representatives and the Senate despite the drag the war on Iraq was having in the electorate.

"I believe that the situation in Iraq is, no question, tough on the American psyche," Bush said.

But he said Republicans held the edge on national security concerns and the running of the economy, labelling the Democrats as the party that would "cut and run" from Iraq and also raise taxes.

"I still stand by my prediction: we'll have a Republican speaker and a Republican leader of the Senate," Bush said, noting "we're on the right side of the economic issue and the security issue".

But if he's wrong, the outlook for his presidency is grim. The Democrats may not try to impeach him but his status as a lame-duck President will be confirmed, and that during a time of war and with the US facing otherformidable foreign policy challenges, such as North Korea.

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