Can't Find His Bullhorn With Both Hands
by digby
Gene Lyons, writing his great column from outside the beltway, sees something that everyone else missed:
Here’s a puzzle: If President Bush really thinks he’s holding all the cards in his impending showdown with congressional Democrats over Iraq funding, why bother with a veto ? On previous occasions when Congress passed laws Bush found irksome, he’s quietly issued “signing statements” declaring in essence that the president is a law unto himself. Statutes Bush doesn’t like, he vows to ignore. He’s done it scores of times.
This issue would seem to be tailor made for such a signing statement, don't you think? All that stuff about executive power to wage war and commander in chief, blah, blah, blah? As Lyons says:
He did it with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, granting himself the authority to indulge in warrantless wiretaps. He did it again with the 2006 Patriot Act, signing a bill mandating reports to Congress about the FBI’s use of national security letters, but asserting that the president needn’t comply. It’s no coincidence that the Justice Department’s inspector-general later found widespread FBI abuses of privacy rights. So why not just issue another signing statement saying Congress can pass all the resolutions it wants, but U. S. troops won’t be leaving Iraq until the Decider gives the order?
Lyons believes it's because this is too high profile for him to get away with, but also that some Republicans believe that this is a political winner for them and so are anxious for the "showdown." They seem to think that the Democrats are on the run. Lyons points out that the data says otherwise:
GOP glee is contradicted not only by 2006 election results, but also by every extant opinion poll. A March 29 Pew survey asked whether “Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far... in challenging George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq.” Exactly 23 percent said “too far,” 30 percent answered “about right” and 40 percent “not far enough.”
The Post’s own poll shows that 56 percent favor pulling U. S. forces out of Iraq “even if that means civil order is not restored there.”
The public’s far ahead of the Beltway opinion elite. This president is no longer trusted. Once people make that fundamental decision, they rarely change their minds. They’ve pretty much had it with Bush, Dick Cheney and their far-fetched World War II analogies. They understand that Iraq’s not a war, it’s a military occupation, and a catastrophically bungled one.
When as relentless a hawk as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger says, as he did recently in Tokyo, that “a ‘military victory’ in the sense of total control over the whole territory, imposed on the entire population, is not possible,” Americans no longer believe that any conceivable Iraqi government is worth the cost in lives and treasure. They recognize the childishness of basing U. S. policy on al-Qa’ida taunts, as Bush and Cheney have done repeatedly.
I understand why the political establishment is convinced it's incredibly risky for the Democrats to face down the president on this. As they always do, they are fighting the last war (and half a dozen before that.) They remember that the loathesome Newt Gingrich failed when he faced off against Clinton, so the "rule" must be that the congress always loses in a face-off with the president. But as Media Matters illustrated in this article on the subject, they forget that it was the exceedingly unpopular substance of what Gingrich was trying to do (rape medicare) that the public didn't like:
Regarding the budget issue, The New York Times noted in a November 11, 1995, article:
The most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal Poll shows a continuing erosion of public support for their [the Republicans' budget] program. ... [I]n October, only 35 percent were supporters and 45 percent were opposed.
Similarly, Newsday noted on November 11, 1995, that a "USA Today/CNN poll released yesterday suggested Americans by wide margins have soured on the Republican agenda, with 60 percent saying he [Clinton] should veto the budget bill and 33 percent saying he should sign it."
This did not happen in an environment of media friendliness to Bill Clinton, by the way. He was being harrassed and derided at every turn by the Republicans and the press for dozens of disparate small bore, tabloid scandals. The people, for whatever reasons, were able to see through that to the core of the issue, which was that the Republicans were trying to pass a heinous budget and were willing to shut down the government even though they knew the public wasn't with them. (Gingrich made that mistake over and over again.)
Republicans have the most dangerous habit in the world: they believe their own hype. And it gets them into trouble again and again. Having a president that has been hovering for many, many months at around 30% approval rating is a weakness so huge that it can't be overcome with a swagger and a sneer. I do not know how this "showdown" will turn out. It's a very fluid situation and anything can happen. But in this case, as in the earlier case, the Democrats are working on behalf of the majority of Americans and the Republicans are not. That is far more likely to govern the outcome than some miraculous return of the mythic man with the bullhorn.
If Bush really believes what he's been saying about executive power and the need to fund the troops by the middle of April then he can sign the supplemental and then issue a signing statement that says he can ignore the withdrawal dates. But he won't. And he won't issue that signing statement because it would cause a national uproar and possible constitutional crisis, which it would. He's not doing it because crazy men are telling him that this confrontation is the way to bounce back --- the same crazy men that advised him to invade Iraq and told him that he didn't need to respond to the worst national disaster in American history.
So have at it George. The Democrats will take their chances. Your track record wouldn't scare a seven year old girl.
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