The Same Old George

By William Rivers Pitt
Created Nov 17 2006 - 9:10am

Beat on the brat,
Beat on the brat,
Beat on the brat with a baseball bat,
Oh yeah ...
-- The Ramones

All the talk of bi-partisanship after the midterm elections was really nice,
wasn't it? Granted, the only reason conversation got steered in that
direction was because the Republican Party absorbed a staggering defeat the
Tuesday after last, because George W. Bush had the shattered pieces of his
credibility - nay, of his entire tenure to date - handed to him in a small
brown paper sack by the American people. But hey, it was good while it
lasted.

It didn't last.

The first rumblings of the wow-nothing-has-changed-at-all-in-the-White-House
phenomenon started last week, when Bush's people intimated that the
lame-duck GOP Congress would be tasked to ram through some highly dubious
legislation before they get shoved into the minority seats come January.
First off, Bush wanted John Bolton, now serving a temp job as UN ambassador,
to be permanently confirmed.

If any time was available, Bush also wanted Congress to pass blanket
approval for his highly controversial and almost certainly illegal
warrantless wiretapping program. To wit, he was hoping his pals in Congress
would paper over this particular set of broken FISA laws before the new
chairmen come in with subpoena power.

Thankfully, it does not appear that either of these will fly before the new
Congress begins its session. Key Republicans have come out against Bolton,
which does not preclude the possibility of Bush cementing him into his
position by fiat, and very few Republicans appear interested in touching the
wiretapping bill with a ten foot legislative pole.

It isn't the content of these moves - dangerous and obnoxious as the content
may be - so much as it is the form. Bush gave that quasi-deranged press
conference in the aftermath of the elections last week, and between making
bad jokes to the press while throwing Karl Rove under the bus, he made all
the right noises about working with the new majority in Congress. Meetings
with Pelosi and Reid yielded similar-sounding platitudes. Yet the Bolton
thing, and the wiretapping thing, combine to paint a picture we have become
all too familiar with.

Call it My Way or the Highway Gothic, with lines and shades as predictable
as gravity. Failure to get Bolton or the wiretapping legislation installed
as top Congressional priorities did not seem to thwart Bush, for he unfurled
on Thursday a whole new battery of the same old stuff.

"Bush Renominates Judicial Picks," read the Thursday headline in the
Washington Post. "President Bush renominated six previously blocked
candidates for federal appeals court yesterday," went the story, "triggering
the first real battle with ascendant Democrats since the midterm elections
and signaling what could be the start of a fierce two-year struggle over the
shape of the federal judiciary. The move heartened conservatives who worried
that Bush would scale back his ambition to move courts to the right and
outraged liberals, who called it a violation of the spirit of bipartisanship
promised since Democrats captured Congress. Both sides saw it as a possible
harbinger for the remainder of Bush's presidency, particularly if a Supreme
Court vacancy opens."

The six nominees are all considered either unabashedly unqualified or far
too right-wing. This crew - Michael B. Wallace for the US Court of Appeals
for the 5th Circuit; William J. Haynes II and Terrence W. Boyle Jr. for the
4th Circuit; William G. Myers III and Norman Randy Smith for the 9th
Circuit; and Peter D. Keisler for the DC Circuit - were such bad choices
that even Bush's rubber-stamp Senate majority refused to give them a vote.

Four other nominees have been deployed by Bush as well: James E. Rogan to
the U.S. District Court in California; Benjamin H. Settle to the district
court in Washington state; and Margaret A. Ryan and Scott W. Stucky to the
US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. The name Rogan may be familiar, as
he once served in Congress as one of the House managers for the impeachment
prosecution of Bill Clinton. Yeah, this will be a fun group to deal with.

The Post notes that "the Senate almost certainly will not act on them in the
lame-duck session that adjourns next month. If Bush wants to keep pushing
for these nominations, he will have to resubmit them in January, when the
Senate reconvenes with a 51-vote Democratic majority." In other words, the
beatings will cease once morale improves.

On top of this, Bush has also renominated two colossal failures into
positions of responsibility they don't deserve; in one case, the fellow
nominated was so inept, he is at least partially responsible for getting a
bunch of people hurt. Richard Stickler was nominated by Bush to be head of
the Mine Safety and Health Administration, after his previous nomination was
blocked by the Senate. Bush did an end run around the process and used a
recess appointment to place Stickler into MSHA. As a coal industry executive
from 1989 to 1996, Stickler presided over injury rates that were double the
national average. The families of the miners lost in Sago will find his
nomination far from comforting.

The other nominee, Paul DeCamp for administrator of the US Department of
Labor's Wage and Hour Division, also failed to win Senate confirmation the
first time around, and also got a recess appointment from Bush. DeCamp has
previously served as an attorney for Wal-Mart, and has some interesting
ideas about overtime. Basically, he doesn't think workers should get paid
for overtime, period. He is also no great fan of the Fair Labor Standards
Act, and is on record urging the weakening of these worker protections.

As with the judicial nominees, it does not appear likely these two will be
approved by the lame-duck GOP Congress, and like the judicial nominees, it
seems all but certain that they will be rejected by the new Democratic
majority. This is, in the end, hardly the point. It is one thing to say all
the right words about working with Congress to get things done for the
American people. It is another thing again to actually do it.

Amazing, no? George W. Bush gets smacked in the head with an electoral
baseball bat, and he still refuses to get the message. This will prove to be
an interesting two years indeed.

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson