Bush “Unfit to Lead”

Posted on by

This is Joel Klein writing this, note —

The three big Bush stories of 2007–the decision to “surge” in Iraq, the scandalous treatment of wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for tawdry political reasons–precisely illuminate the three qualities that make this Administration one of the worst in American history: arrogance (the surge), incompetence (Walter Reed) and cynicism (the U.S. Attorneys)….

… When Bush came to office–installed by the Supreme Court after receiving fewer votes than Al Gore–I speculated that the new President would have to govern in a bipartisan manner to be successful. He chose the opposite path, and his hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I’ve tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration–arrogance, incompetence, cynicism–are congenital: they’re part of his personality. They’re not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

This is a miracle. Klein is almost as thick as David Brooks, yet a light has dawned.

Like Kevin Drum, I am awed by Klein’s overuse of dashes. Other quibbles from Kevin —

Yeah, we hear you. Except for a few things. It’s not really arrogance, is it? More like barroom obstinance. And not quite cynicism, either. Closer to partisanship and paranoia gone psychopathic. And I’d change “not likely” to something a little stronger. Let’s say, “Pigs will orbit Mars before this changes.” And finally, that “difficult to imagine” part isn’t quite right either. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to imagine.

Read all of Klein’s piece, anyway.

Counterbalancing Bush

Posted on by

[Update: Make some noise — tell CNN to get the facts right about the Pelosi trip.]

An editorial in today’s Boston Globe:

EVEN AS a matter of political self-interest, President Bush made himself look bad by carping about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit yesterday in Damascus with Syria’s president, Bashar Assad.

Bush’s complaint that Pelosi and the bipartisan congressional delegation were sending “mixed signals” made it appear that Bush either resents or refuses to accept the Constitution’s unambiguous granting of extensive powers in foreign policy to the legislative branch. Pelosi and her colleagues were doing what innumerable delegations of senators and representatives have done in the past: traveling abroad to consult with foreign leaders, gather information, and enhance their ability to fulfill their obligations to advise, consent, and appropriate funds. Republican congressmen met with Assad last week. If the American system of checks and balances is to function properly, the co-equal legislative branch must exercise its powers to check and balance the actions of the executive branch.

Predictably, the Washington Post editorial on the Pelosi trip calls it “foolish shuttle diplomacy.” It’s a foolish editorial, which you may read if you like. I’m skipping right to the commentary. Nico at Think Progress:

The Washington Post editorial page today published a vicious editorial attacking Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), calling her “ludicrous” and describing her bipartisan trip to Syria as an “attempt to establish a shadow presidency.”

The editorial rests on two claims, both of which are baseless.

1) Pelosi passed an incorrect message from Israel to Syria. Pelosi said yesterday that she gave Syrian officials the message that Israel is “ready to engage in peace talks.” The Post falsely claims, “The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message,” misinterpreting a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s office that simply reiterated its position that talks with Syria will not take place until Syria has taken steps to end its support for extremist elements. There is no evidence that Pelosi failed to communicate this message. In fact, Pelosi’s delegation specifically pressed the Syrian president “over Syria’s support for militant groups and insist[ed] that his government block militants seeking to cross into Iraq and join insurgents there.”

2) Pelosi is attempting to “establish a shadow presidency.” This claim is directly contradicted by the Post’s own reporting this morning, which states, “Foreign policy experts generally agree that Pelosi’s dealings with Middle East leaders have not strayed far, if at all, from those typical for a congressional trip.” Pelosi herself has “described the trip as little different than the visit paid to Syria the same week led by Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-VA),” and she went to great lengths to express her unity of purpose with President Bush on terrorism issues. The Post’s own reporting today also cites several instances of members of Congress meeting with foreign leaders during the past 30 years. As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, in contrast with Pelosi’s trip, previous congressional actions abroad attempted to directly undermine President Clinton.

See also Frank James at The Swamp.

Publius at Obsidian Wings:

The Washington Post editorial board should apologize for its over-the-top, and borderline sexist, attack on Pelosi for visiting Syria. It’s fine if they have substantive disagreements, but the mocking language they used (“ludicrous,” “foolish,” “Ms. Pelosi grandly declared”) is unprofessional. You don’t see them using this type of Drudge-like mockery even in their strongest attacks on the administration, but it’s ok for Pelosi I suppose.

CNN’s sloppy and inaccurate reporting of the trip hasn’t helped.

Kagro X at Kos:

Meanwhile, the parade of Republicans through Damascus continues unabated, with the arrival of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), close on the heels of another delegation led by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). As we know, Bush, like Boehner, has criticized these delegations as undermining his own “diplomacy.” So what does Darrell have to say?

    Commenting on Bush’s criticism, California Republican Darrell Issa said the president had failed to promote the necessary dialogue to resolve disagreements between the U.S. and Syria.

    “That’s an important message to realize: We have tensions, but we have two functioning embassies.”

And Frank?

    “I don’t care what the administration says on this. You gotta do what you think is in the best interest of your country,” said Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, who was part of the delegation.

    “I don’t care what the administration says on this.”

What’s that about going to Syria to embarrass the president, Mr. Boehner?

I don’t think the attacks on Pelosi are so much about Syria as they are about Iraq, or more accurately the supplement bill fight. The hawks are doing everything they can to knock her down, to make her the enemy. They’re desperate.

Update: Joe Conason writes, “The problem is not what Pelosi did or said, but how she exposed the exhaustion of neoconservative policy.” It’s a good article.

The Inevitable Candidate

Posted on by

Last night I endured considerable babbling from the television pundits about Barack Obama’s first quarter fundraising results. Consensus among the bobbleheads is that all those little people who gave nickles and dimes to Sen. Obama instead of Sen. Clinton must be (a) angry with her because of the war, or (b) still suffering Clinton fatigue. Or both.

I think both are a factor, but I think there’s another factor the bobbleheads are missing.

For the past few bleeping years the pundits have been telling us that Sen. Hillary Clinton will be the 2008 presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. No doubt about it. She’s got all this money, all these connections, a killer political organization — nay, a machine — behind her. Whether the Democratic Party base wanted her to be the candidate was never questioned. She was who we were going to get, like it or not.

After a while, Sen. Clinton started to sound like the Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Frankly, this attitude has been pissing me off.

What’s worse, the Inevitable Candidate talk seemed symptomatic of what’s been wrong with the national Democratic Party for years — their insulation. For a lot of reasons — not all of them the fault of the politicians — the Dems haven’t had anything like a national progressive coalition behind them for about thirty years now. That means leadership positions in the party are entirely filled by people who are accustomed to running (and, occasionally, winning) election campaigns without thinking much about what a progressive base might want. Worse, many Dems have treated us progressives and liberals like disreputable relations; they don’t mind if we donate money and turn out to vote for them, but they’d rather not be seen with us in public.

So, instead of being active participants in the political process, we’re supposed to be the passive consumers of whatever product the party chooses to market. Bleep that, I say.

I’ve asked myself if I would feel the same way about an Inevitable Candidate if the I.C. were someone whose stand on the Iraq War and other issues were closer to my own opinions than Sen. Clinton’s are. Yes, I believe I would. I might support an I.C., but only if the candidate were someone capable of winning my support anyway. In other words, I’d support the I.C. in spite of his being the I.C., not because of it.

There a couple of things I suspect but can’t prove. One, I suspect much of the aura of Inevitable Candidate was wrapped about Sen. Clinton by the Right, because she’s the candidate they most want to run against in 2008. Two, I think Barack Obama is benefiting from some backlash against the I.C. I think a lot of the people who donated nickles and dimes to Barack Obama did so because he’s the only candidate other than Hillary Clinton the pundits take seriously these days.

There’s no one Dem officially running that I support 100 percent for the presidential nomination. It’s a strong field, but no one really stands out for me yet. But it’s 19 months until the election. In theory, we ought to have a lot of time yet to make up our minds. It used to be that presidential nominees were chosen by the party conventions three or four months before the elections. Now, we’re going to have a nominee chosen many months before most people are paying attention to presidential politics. And if the prime criterion for winning the nomination is collecting more donations than the other guys — how does that give us a good president, exactly?

Along these lines — there’s a good editorial called “Running for Dollars” in today’s New York Times.

Heir Apparent Deposed?

Posted on by

Another bit of good news — Barack Obama’s first-quarter fundraising came very close to Hillary Clinton’s, which puts a big dent in the assumption that Senator Clinton’s nomination is inevitable. Let the competition begin.

Even better — according to this chart at MyDD, Obama’s money came from 100,000 donors, while Clinton’s money came from 50,000 donors. That means Obama is getting smaller donations from more people, while Clinton is getting bigger donations from fewer people.

British Sailors to Be Freed

Posted on by

Iranian President Ahmadinejad has announced Iran will free the 15 British sailors. I don’t want to celebrate until the sailors are truly free, but I do get the impression it’s a done deal. The concession Britain made was to promise not to intrude into Iranian waters again, sort of admitting they had, although I’m not sure anyone really knows. I get the impression that exactly which waters are Iraqi and which are Iranian are a matter of long-standing dispute.

Pelosi Wears Scarf; Righties Bark at Moon

Posted on by

[Update: This post is being linked to in a forum in which some rightie claims it is only us lefties making a Big Bleeping Deal out of the scarf. The fact is, much of the rightie blogosphere went into hysterics about Nancy Pelosi’s scarf. Think Progress has a selection of links.]

Of all the dumb things to get worked up into a snit about, this one is almost as dumb as Ann Althouse’s boob post.

The jolly folks at Little Green Footballs have gone batshit bleeping crazy because Nancy Pelosi wore a headscarf to visit a mosque in Syria. “Pelosi in a hijab!” they shriek.

Hello? Some of us are old enough to remember when women were required to cover their hair in Catholic churches. Here’s the divine Jackie with that first guy she married outside a church sometime in the late 1950s.

Apparently scarves are still a requirement at the Vatican.

[Update] Speaking of Laura Bush, here’s a lovely photograph of her visiting the Muslim holy shrine the Dome of the Rock in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, May 22, 2005.

I’d also like to note that American women very commonly wore headscarves tied under their chins like that all through the 1950s and into the 1960s. I remember wearing them myself; one wrapped one’s head when going outside to protect one’s bouffant hairdo from wind and weather. Apparently the only woman on the planet who still does that is Queen Elizabeth II, as portrayed below by Helen Mirren in The Queen (which is a lovely little flm, btw).

Nowadays it looks frumpy as hell, but Audrey Hepburn could carry it off.

I can’t say that Muslim women never wear a tied-under-the-chin scarf, but from what I see in photographs an actual hijab is usually wrapped rather than tied.

I’m certain I’ve seen photographs of Karen Hughes and Condi Rice with scarves wrapped around their heads hijab-style while visiting the Middle East, but I couldn’t find one to post here. If anyone else can, please leave the URL in the comments.

Update: Check out the exclusive Pelosi in ’07 tee shirt!

Update2: Thank you and a big smooch to maha reader johnnyrocket, who found this photo of Condi Rice in “hijab.”

Update3: Now LGF is whining that we lefties are being mean to them. The point was not about the scarf, they say, but that Pelosi was in Syria.

First, read this post and tell me the point isn’t about the scarf.

Second, three Republican congressmen were in Damascus last week.

The “Surge” Just Failed

Posted on by

Cenk Uygur:

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has put the last piece of straw on the poor camel called Iraq. And its back is about to break. …

… After that snake Ahmed Chalabi talked to him, he has put the word out that he will not back the de-Baathification program (this NYT article explains it best). That means Sunnis will not get the stable jobs that would give them an incentive to join the Iraqi government. That means they will feel alienated and fight back against a government that completely excludes them. The insurgency will grow. The civil war which has already begun will now spiral out of control.

The Sunnis no longer have any incentive to make a deal. The only place where they think they might make gains is on the battlefield (I believe they are also sorely mistaken in that belief). So, it’s on. Iraq no longer exists.

By the way, in case you missed it — yes, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani makes the most important decisions in Iraq. The real power in Iraq runs through Sistani. He decided who would be elected to the Iraqi government in the first place when he selected the religious Shiite bloc that won the 2005 elections. George Bush handed Iraq over to a Grand Ayatollah. Brilliant work. Genius. Is it possible to be more incompetent?

So, now the rest of this will play out predictably. The Sunni insurgency will not let up at all. At some point, either we will start to withdraw and be replaced by Shiite militia (by the way, where is the Iraqi army, do they still exist?). That’s the best case scenario.

Expect the MSM “pundits” to figure this out in six to eight months.

Journalists Should Not Be “Disinterested” About Truth

Posted on by

I’m a little late commenting on the bogus charge that John McCain was heckled by Michael Ware, but it’s been weighing on me so I’ll comment anyway.

I sometimes wish videos of President Lyndon Johnson’s press conferences were available on the web (if they are, let me know). As I remember it, at some point after the Vietnam War began the Washington press corps began to hound LBJ mercilessly. The press became openly antagonistic to Johnson, and I won’t say he didn’t deserve it. When reporters began to treat Richard Nixon the same way they’d treated LBJ, Nixon sent out Spiro Agnew to stir up faux outrage against the nattering nabobs of negativism and whine about liberal media bias; thus a myth was born. The fact is, as I remember it the press was a shade gentler to Nixon than it had been to LBJ. And by the time Reagan came along they’d become sufficiently defensive about “”liberal media bias” that reporters generally treated Reagan with kid gloves compared to the way they’d treated presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. And in comparison to the press corps in Johnson’s day, today’s White House reporters are a neutered and toothless lot, indeed.

I thought of LBJ’s press conferences yesterday after I saw this post by the Instaputz:

DISINTERESTED JOURNALISM: John McCain heckled by CNN reporter.

Ah, professionalism.

UPDATE: Hard to argue: “Michael Ware’s behavior here is flat out unprofessional. If CNN keeps him on staff after this incident, that says something, doesn’t it?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Tabin: “Heckling at a press conference is very rude, and wouldn’t be acceptable even from an opinion journalist (I wouldn’t dream of laughing in Nancy Pelosi’s face during a press conference). That said, isn’t it better when guys like Ware let their biases hang out, rather than embedding them in reports that are ostensibly objective?”

Wouldn’t it be better still if they just did an honest job of doing, you know, their jobs?

Later, Raw Story posted videos of the alleged heckling and, um, it wasn’t heckling. And to be fair, several rightie bloggers, including Reynolds, retracted their allegations.

But I want to address the part about reporters being “disinterested,” which means objective or neutral. Objectivity and neutrality are splendid. But “neutrality” and “objectivity” don’t translate into “pretending not to notice when a politician is lying his ass off.”

“Objectivity” used to mean that one shouldn’t allow personal biases to get in the way of telling the truth. Now it seems to mean one mustn’t tell the bare-assed truth about what politicians are up to, especially if they’re Republicans, because it makes the politicians look bad.

Regarding John McCain’s stroll through a Baghdad market (accompanied by 100 troops and two Apache helicopters), Kirk Semple writes in today’s New York Times:

A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his three Congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” offered Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who was a member of the delegation.

McCain and Pence and everybody else who staged that little stunt in support of the war deserved whatever razzing they got from the press. The fact that we are still being told about the soldiers and helicopters is not “media bias“; it’s “what a free press looks like.”

Fertilizing the Roses

Posted on by

The President is scheduled to throw another public temper tantrum in the Rose Garden at 10 a.m. today. Apparently Harry Reid stole the presidential rubber ducky, and Bush wants it back.

I’ll watch and let you know how pathetic it is.

Update: Make that 10:10 a.m.

Here we go. Bush just said he met with General Pace and the joint chiefs of staff. He’s claiming the surge is working just fine, although it will be early June before the entire surge is in place. Having an impact, making a difference, he says.

It has now been 57 days since I requested emergency funds. Instead of passing a clean bill, the politicians have passed bills that undercut the troops and substituted the judgment of politicians in Washington for commanders on the ground.

[Update: See Think Progress about the 57 days.]

He’s playing the pork card. Democrats are bad and have left Washington for spring recess without finishing the work. How dare anyone but Bush take vacations. Dems are making a political statement. He wants the bill quickly so he can veto it, and then Congress can get down to work and do what he wants.

He’s still claiming that if the bill isn’t enacted by mid-April the troops will suffer. I have debunked that claim in earlier posts.

Blah blah blah; units will be extended, blah blah, if Congress does not act, blah blah. You’ve heard this before. I’m waiting for him to say something new.

He’s answering questions. He’s worried there are “a group of people” who don’t think we should be in Iraq (like, most of the American public) and he has “listened patiently” to their complaints and has decided he is right and they are wrong. Basically that’s all he says; I think I’m right, so I’m going ahead and do what I want to do.

He’s saying that the solution to Iraq is more than a military mission, which is why he sent more troops to Baghdad. (Yes.) He wants to provide “breathing room” for the Iraqi government to work.

He is afraid if we fail in Iraq “the enemy” will find a “safe haven” from which to plot future attacks on America, and if we fail in Iraq the enemy will follow us here, and SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11. So there.

Have I ever mentioned how much it bothers me that the creature smiles at inappropriate times? I believe I have.

David Gregory is now “dancing man.”

Gregory said Congress is trying to exert more control over foreign policy, and isn’t that what the voters wanted? Bush says no, the voters want Congress to support the troops. And now he’s complaining about the pork again.

He’s basically dismissing what Congress passed as a political game, and he wants Congress to stop playing politics and get down to business, i.e. resume the role of rubber stamp.

He keeps harping on Congress for taking a week off at a time that’s inconvenient for him.

People have to understand what will happen if we fail, he says, grinning broadly. Oh, please, the radicals are being emboldened again. Please. And they will recruit more terrorists. Like they aren’t doing that now.

Defeat them there so we don’t have to defeat them here SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11. And the way to defeat their ideology is by a competing ideology, one that respects human rights. Yeah, that’s what Democrats are trying to do.

Somebody is asking him about being isolated from other Republicans, especially in Congress. He is baffled by the question. He says that once Congress is brought to heel passes his supplement bill the way he wants it, from then on everybody will get along just fine. And he opposes tax increases.

Somebody is questioning the “they will follow us home” scenario. Bush is brushing it off. SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11 SEPTEMBER 11. I don’t know how they’ll do it, Bush says, I just know they will.

He wants the Middle East to change into a part of the world that will not serve as a threat to the civilized world. Then he changed civilized to developed.

It’s over, thank goodness. Now Chris Matthews says Bush is just trying to hold on to his base. Matthews also says that if the “surge” isn’t working by August, Bush will finally be out of time. Earth to Tweetie: Bush will never admit that he is out of time.

Well, that’s it.

Dem’s Post-Veto Stretegy

Posted on by

[Update: via email from John Kerry’s Senate office — Kerry will join Reid as a co-sponsor of Senator Feingold’s bill.]

The post-veto strategy is shaping up. Bob Geiger writes,

In anticipation of a Bush veto and the likelihood that they won’t be able to summon enough Republicans who care about the troops or public opinion sufficiently to override that veto, Senate Democrats are already rolling out a contingency plan that puts the GOP on notice about something very important: That they are going to be forced over and over again to be on the record as voting to strand our military men and women in the middle of a bloody civil war.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), long one of the gutsy leaders on the Democratic side of the Senate aisle, has announced that he will propose legislation immediately on return from this week’s break that will cut off all funding for the Iraq war in less than a year.

Upping the ante on another major showdown immediately following the expected Bush veto of the war-funding (and withdrawal) bill, is the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) supports the Feingold measure and has signed on as the bill’s first cosponsor.

On the other end of the wimp scale, Barack Obama believes the Senate will cave and pass a bill without the timeline because no one “wants to play chicken” over funding the troops.

“My expectation is that we will continue to try to ratchet up the pressure on the president to change course,” the Democratic presidential candidate said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage.”

There are those who argue that would be a smart political move. I think they’re wrong; I think they’re misreading the public mood. I think a large majority of Americans would really like to see Congress stand up to Bush. On the other hand, the Dem political elite, long accustomed to caution and accommodation to the Right, are still tip-toeing. Jonathan Weisman writes in today’s Washington Post:

Leon E. Panetta, who was a top White House aide when President Bill Clinton pulled himself off the mat through repeated confrontations with Congress, sees the same risk. He urged Democrats to stick to their turf on such issues as immigration, health care and popular social programs, and to prove they can govern.

“That’s where their strength is,” Panetta said. “If they go into total confrontation mode on these other things, where they just pass bills and the president vetoes them, that’s a recipe for losing seats in the next election.”

Um, Mr. Panetta, that’s the same thinking that caused the Dems to get swamped in the 2002 midterm elections.

Republicans these days are full of helpful advice for the Dems.

Backed by a unified party and fresh from a slew of legislative victories, Democratic leaders appear to believe there is hardly any territory they cannot stray onto, a development that has Republican political operatives gleeful and some Democrats worried. Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, warned of a “political price” at the polls: “If they let their constituents and their ideology drive them past the point where the American people are comfortable, they will find how quickly the voters will react.” …

… Most Republicans are convinced the president will win his veto standoff over House and Senate war spending bills that would impose mandatory troop withdrawals from Iraq.

“It’s going to be like the government shutdowns” of 1995 and 1996, predicted Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “The Democrats’ honeymoon is fixing to end. It’s going to explode like an IED.”

I don’t think the government shutdown episodes were anything like the potential standoff between Bush and Congress over Iraq. The shutdowns came out of a disagreement between Congress and President Clinton over the budget. At the time most Americans didn’t give a hoohaw about the budget. News reports were all about how much money was being wasted because of the shutdown and how citizens all over the country were being inconvenienced, including 2 million visitors turned away from closed national parks. Whatever principle Newt Gingrich was trying to stand on didn’t seem worth it to most folks.

Public reaction to the shutdown did explode on the Republicans like an IED, that’s true. But we’re looking at an entirely different set of facts here. In 1995, few Americans really understood (or cared) why Newt Gingrich was grandstanding over the budget. The Iraq War they understand — it’s a bleeping disaster. And they care about ending it with growing intensely. Read more about the false comparisons with the standoff episodes at Media Matters.

Back to the Weisman article in WaPo —

Even as their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq escalates, emboldened congressional Democrats are challenging the White House on a range of issues — such as unionization of airport security workers and the loosening of presidential secrecy orders — with even more dramatic showdowns coming soon.

For his part, Bush, who also finds himself under assault for the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the conduct of the Iraq war and alleged abuses in government surveillance by the FBI, is holding firm. Though he has vetoed only one piece of legislation since taking office, he has vowed to veto 16 bills that have passed either the House or the Senate in the three months since Democrats took control of Congress.

Bills such as?

A House-passed bill would require the government to negotiate prices for prescription drugs for Medicare beneficiaries, highlighting what Democrats consider a shortcoming of the president’s landmark Medicare prescription drug law. Bush has promised a veto.

A Senate-approved measure would allow screeners at the Transportation Security Administration to unionize, prompting a veto threat. White House opposition to that in 2002 led to a legislative standoff over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security that proved devastating to Democrats, who were painted as soft on terrorism.

That’s not the whole story. When Bush decided to support creation of a Department of Homeland Security (a sudden flipflop) he inserted the anti-union provision into the bill as a “poison pill.” When Democrats balked at the bill because of the anti-union measure, Republicans hollered that the Dems were against a Department of Homeland Security (actually they had been pushing for it while Bush fought against it) and thus “soft on terrorism.” Most people who heard the Republican charge didn’t understand why the Dems were opposed to Bush’s version of a Department of Homeland Security.

A bill to ease the public release of official papers from presidential libraries also yielded a veto promise, although it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The measure would reverse one of Bush’s executive orders, which has helped keep reams of presidential documents under lock and key.

Budgets passed by the House and Senate assume the expiration of most of Bush’s tax cuts in 2012, and Democrats are demanding tough new standards for labor rights and environmental regulations as a condition of extending the president’s authority to expedite trade negotiations.

The White House has also vowed to block two separate House bills that would extend whistle-blower protections to national security and rail security workers.

My sense of the public mood — which I admit may be warped, since I live in one of the bluer blue states — is that a majority of Americans are leaning toward the Dem view on most of these issues. I don’t see how a Bush veto would hurt them politically one bit.

On the other hand, Dem attempts to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and repeal the Patriot Act could still be politically dicey. The poll numbers I found on Gitmo and the PA were about a year old, and at the time approval-disapproval was at about fifty-fifty split.

Public education is critical. IMO the more the public knows about these issues, the more likely they will side with Democrats. The less they know, the more likely they will be taken in by Republicans.

Update: Russ Feingold writes “How Congress can end the war without hurting the troops” in Salon.