George W. Bush campaigned in 2000 as “a uniter, not a divider.”
This, of course, has become something of a punchline; the Bush
years have been marked by neither an abundance of unity nor a lack
of division. But the slogan was rooted in Bush’s record as governor
of Texas, where he did indeed build a record of relative bipartisan
comity. Of course, Texas Democrats are generally to the right of
the national party; it should have surprised no one that comity is
harder to come by in Washington than in Austin.
Thus Bush’s gubernatorial experience left him somewhat
ill-equipped for brass-knuckled Washington politics. This has been
somewhat obscured, for most of his term, by GOP control of both
houses of Congress. But now that Democrats have taken over Capitol
Hill, Bush’s weakness as a political fighter has become suddenly
consequential and alarming.
Most obvious of late has been an inability to pick battles. It’s
no secret that Bush places a high value on loyalty, often to a
fault. (One of his first decisions after 9/11 was to punish no one
for the intelligence failure.) His decision to stick by Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales is a case in point. Gonzales claimed
before Congress that politics played no role in the Justice
Department’s personnel decisions. Of course, politics did play a
role. The question of whether the role it played was proper (making
sure that U.S. Attorneys share the administration’s prosecutorial
priorities) or improper (interfering with specific cases) is
secondary to the fact that Gonzales was either not on top of the
workings of the Department he’s supposed to run, or he was fibbing.
Either would be grounds for dismissal. More to the point, the whole
kerfuffle provides Democrats with a handy cudgel to hit the White
House with. It doesn’t take a rhetorical genius to hype this flap
into a haymaking scandal; Nancy Pelosi is perfectly equal to the
task.
By bleeding political capital over the U.S. Attorney firings,
Bush is endangering a much more important political battle, one
that could literally mean the difference between success and
failure in Iraq. The Democratic Congress has passed a war-funding
bill that hamstrings the war effort by limiting troop deployments
and setting a deadline for withdrawal. Bush plans on vetoing this
bill, as well he should. But will he win the needed funding for the
war effort after the veto? In a few months, the Pentagon will face
cash flow problems that must be addressed.
To put together the slim majority that voted for this
constitutionally questionable attempt to micromanage the war, the
Democrats larded it
up with shameful pork-barrel spending. It should be easy to
bludgeon them from the bully pulpit for this. After all, one can
take a principled stand that we should give Gen. David Petraeus the
resources to conduct the surge, or one can take a principled stand
that Iraq can’t be won and withdrawal is the only option. A serious
person cannot have his mind changed on this issue by federal
dollars for his district. At least a few representatives should
buckle under pressure when called out by name for letting their
votes be bought.
But as long as the feeding frenzy over the U.S. Attorney firings
continues, the Democrats will remain on the attack, emboldened by
their political advantage to inch closer to the more aggressively
antiwar political ground that has so far looked too treacherous.
It’s time for Bush to decide whether he wants to put his energy
into sticking up for Gonzales or for Petraeus.
