Helen Thomas: Veto power makes lame duck relevant

[babylonsister]

Veto power makes lame duck relevant

By HELEN THOMAS
HEARST NEWSPAPERS

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The dying months of the disastrous Bush presidency are beginning to resemble the twilight of the Clinton administration.

Both presidents have had to plaintively proclaim they were still "relevant" even as their epitaphs were being written.

Both presidents belatedly looked for a solution to the perennial Israeli-Palestinian problem to put a feather in their foreign-policy caps.

On that score, President Clinton struck out big time and petulantly put all the blame on the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Clinton supported a plan by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak for Palestinian enclaves to be surrounded by Israeli checkpoints, making a mockery of Palestinian sovereignty. It would have been perilous for any Palestinian leader to accept that plan.

The failure of the peace talks was a blow for Clinton, who gambled on a last bid to add a Middle East triumph to his fading presidency.

President Bush is in the same boat.

Bush repeatedly brags that he is the first president to endorse a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate.

But he has done nothing except give it lip service and has been so pro-Israeli that the U.S. cannot act as an "honest broker" between the two. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is frantically trying to pull together a Middle East peace conference in November.

more...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/337037_thomas28.html

[acmavm]

1. Same old shit, another self-serving politician

<snip>

Clinton -- who had to deal with a Republican Congress -- told reporters "the Constitution gives me relevance." He also played up his veto power to bolster his importance.

When a reporter suggested recently that Bush has become "increasingly irrelevant," Bush replied:

"On the contrary, I've never felt more engaged and more capable of helping people to recognize ... that there's a lot of unfinished business. And I'm really looking forward to the next 15 months. I'm looking forward to getting some things done for the American people."

He also noted that he still has veto power to block any legislation he doesn't like.

"This is one way to ensure that I am relevant," he said. "That's one way to ensure I'm in the process. And I intend to use the veto."

[PSPS]

2. bush "still has veto power to block any legislation he doesn't like" - So do dems, in fact

The bush killing & torture spree could be stopped today if the democrats truly wanted to do so. Bush's "veto power" is just another side to the "we need 60 votes" lie.

Any senator can put a "hold" on a bill and stop it.

Forty democratic senators can filibuster a bill and stop it.

The house's majority democrats can simply refuse to bring a bill forward for a vote and stop it.

Yet here we are, in the same place we would have been even if the republicans had widened their majority in congress in the 2006 election. They're the minority now, yet bush gets everything he wants and more.