W ith less than 22 months left in office, President Bush seems bent on a course of confrontation rather than conciliation as he strives to salvage the semblance of a positive legacy.
The choice, to be sure, is not entirely in his hands. The Democrats? control of Congress has emboldened their leaders to challenge him directly on his war policy. While voting to give him the money to press on in Iraq, they have set a time frame for a drawdown of U.S. forces there that he?s not ready to swallow.
Bush has responded with a flat promise to veto the money bill, even chiding the Democrats to send it to him so he can immediately reject it, knowing he has more than enough Republican votes to sustain him.
Tactically, the president with his troop “surge” has painted Democrats as undercutting American troops in the field by attaching conditions to the war funds that he and Vice President Dick Cheney say amount to surrender and defeat.
The administration once again turned Cheney loose on the Democrats last week in another of his series of interviews with conspicuously friendly interrogators, this time conservative radio ranter Rush Limbaugh.
Cheney put the case, as usual, with the bark off, saying: “I do believe that a significant portion of the Democrats, including, I think, Nancy Pelosi, are adamantly opposed to the war and prepared to pack it in and come home in defeat, rather than put in place or support a policy that will lead to victory.”
With Bush?s legacy clearly resting on his handling of the war, and as a man who proclaims in self-confidence in the rightness of his decisions, it?s no surprise that he is digging his heels in on this paramount issue of his presidency. But in other areas where it would seem an embattled president might seek a more cooperative approach, Bush appears bent on rubbing salt in the wounds of his combative congressional critics.
Even as his imperiled attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, is ensnarled in explaining the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys and the recess appointments of replacements, Bush last week used the same end run around the Senate to appoint three other controversial nominees in other areas.
The president generally has the power to make appointments without going through the confirmation process when the Senate is in recess, as it was all last week for the Easter spring break.
But the Senate and House recently expressed their strong disdain for recess appointments by repealing the provision in the USA Patriot Act authorizing them as a matter of protecting national security.
Though Democrats? opposition to all three non-national security appointments had been made clear, Bush in effect thumbed his nose at them by slipping them in while the senators were away.
The one most egregious to the Democrats was his naming as ambassador to Belgium Sam Fox, a Republican contributor who gave $50,000 in 2004 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose campaign against Sen. John Kerry figured prominently in his defeat for president.
The group challenged Kerry?s right to combat decorations received as a swift boat commander in the Vietnam war, and when Fox?s regular nomination came before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry strenuously objected.
He questioned Fox about use of the politics of personal destruction and Bush subsequently pulled the nomination. But last week, with the Senate out, he bypassed the committee and went ahead with the recess appointment.
The president used the same tactic on two other controversial nominations, of Andrew Biggs to be deputy commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and of Susan Dudley as head of regulatory affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, when Democrats questioned their fitness.
Recess nominations are not uncommon. And, in fact, according to USA Today, Bush rates only fourth in his total number of 171, well behind Ronald Reagan?s 243. But these latter three bypasses were particular pokes in Democratic eyes because there appeared to be no urgent requirement for action, and because the Senate was due back in session in a week.
So, for Bush, it appears to be all-out confrontation ahead.
Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.
