Gene Lyons: Trust in short supply

[babylonsister]

http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Editorial/186453/

Trust in short supply

Gene Lyons

Posted on Wednesday, April 4, 2007


Here’s a puzzle: If President Bush really thinks he’s holding all the cards in his impending showdown with congressional Democrats over Iraq funding, why bother with a veto ? On previous occasions when Congress passed laws Bush found irksome, he’s quietly issued “signing statements” declaring in essence that the president is a law unto himself. Statutes Bush doesn’t like, he vows to ignore. He’s done it scores of times. He did it with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, granting himself the authority to indulge in warrantless wiretaps. He did it again with the 2006 Patriot Act, signing a bill mandating reports to Congress about the FBI’s use of national security letters, but asserting that the president needn’t comply. It’s no coincidence that the Justice Department’s inspector-general later found widespread FBI abuses of privacy rights. So why not just issue another signing statement saying Congress can pass all the resolutions it wants, but U. S. troops won’t be leaving Iraq until the Decider gives the order ? Two somewhat paradoxical reasons. First, the stakes are too high, because everybody’s watching. Bush may be commander-in-chief, but the United States isn’t yet a military dictatorship. Second, some Republicans have convinced themselves they’ve got the Democrats where they want them.

A recent Washington Post news story claims that the impending deadlock “has Republican political operatives gleeful.” Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., predicted, “It’s going to be like the government shutdowns” during Bill Clinton’s administration. “The Democrats’ honeymoon is fixing to end. It’s going to explode like an IED.”

Not the most appropriate simile, I wouldn’t have thought. GOP glee is contradicted not only by 2006 election results, but also by every extant opinion poll. A March 29 Pew survey asked whether “Democratic leaders in Congress are going too far... in challenging George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq.” Exactly 23 percent said “too far,” 30 percent answered “about right” and 40 percent “not far enough.”

The Post’s own poll shows that 56 percent favor pulling U. S. forces out of Iraq “even if that means civil order is not restored there.”

The public’s far ahead of the Beltway opinion elite. This president is no longer trusted. Once people make that fundamental decision, they rarely change their minds. They’ve pretty much had it with Bush, Dick Cheney and their far-fetched World War II analogies. They understand that Iraq’s not a war, it’s a military occupation, and a catastrophically bungled one.

more...