NYT editorial: Bipartisanship on Hold
Published: November 10, 2006
President Bush was back on TV yesterday, without the scowl he’d been sporting the day after the election but with the surviving members of his Cabinet. He talked about how much he was looking forward to lunching with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and working on “the great issues facing America.” Mr. Bush said his team would “respect the results” of the election.
Just maybe not right away.
Without missing a beat, Mr. Bush made it clear that, for now, his idea of how to “put the elections behind us” is to use the Republicans’ last two months in control of Congress to try to push through one of the worst ideas his administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have come up with: a bill that would legalize his illegal wiretapping program and gut the law that limits a president’s ability to abuse his power in this way.
Mr. Bush listed his priorities for the forthcoming lame duck session of Congress. It was an odd list that included only two really urgent items — passing the bills that keep federal money flowing and confirming the nomination of Robert Gates as the next secretary of defense. The rest was a grab bag that included one worthy but hardly urgent idea (getting Vietnam into the World Trade Organization) and a series of ideas ranging from bad to truly awful that Mr. Bush has been unable to get through Congress and hopes to ram through in the Republicans’ last weeks.
(The rest is here.)
President Bush was back on TV yesterday, without the scowl he’d been sporting the day after the election but with the surviving members of his Cabinet. He talked about how much he was looking forward to lunching with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and working on “the great issues facing America.” Mr. Bush said his team would “respect the results” of the election.
Just maybe not right away.
Without missing a beat, Mr. Bush made it clear that, for now, his idea of how to “put the elections behind us” is to use the Republicans’ last two months in control of Congress to try to push through one of the worst ideas his administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have come up with: a bill that would legalize his illegal wiretapping program and gut the law that limits a president’s ability to abuse his power in this way.
Mr. Bush listed his priorities for the forthcoming lame duck session of Congress. It was an odd list that included only two really urgent items — passing the bills that keep federal money flowing and confirming the nomination of Robert Gates as the next secretary of defense. The rest was a grab bag that included one worthy but hardly urgent idea (getting Vietnam into the World Trade Organization) and a series of ideas ranging from bad to truly awful that Mr. Bush has been unable to get through Congress and hopes to ram through in the Republicans’ last weeks.
(The rest is here.)
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