After Gonzales: Twilight for the Bush Presidency?

The resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales marks a significant turning point for the Bush administration.

For one thing, Gonzales' exit signals a witch hunt victory for hardline leftists and the Democratic Party (see Memeorandum's Monday blog round up here). In addition, the administration faces a remaining term on the defense, with little recent legislative momentum and an upcoming presidential election season likely to pull attention away from the White House.

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an analysis of the prospects for the Bush administration's remaining lame-duck agenda:

President Bush's loss of another close, longtime aide closes one particularly messy stage of his second term, but suggests a new one may be opening: the lame-duck phase.

That hardly means Mr. Bush is irrelevant, but it does suggest his means for exerting influence are going to be different -- and perhaps clumsier -- from hereon. Increasingly, it appears he will be preoccupied with three objectives: managing the Iraq war; using presidential vetoes to thwart Democratic plans and spending impulses; and advancing a Republican agenda as best he can through regulatory moves and executive actions that skirt congressional inputOver the past several months, the controversy over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his firing of eight U.S. attorneys has impeded parts of Mr. Bush's agenda, notably the effort to expand wiretaps of terror suspects. The attorney general chose to use Congress's August recess period to put a stop to such distractions by ending his embattled term.

Over the past several months, the controversy over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his firing of eight U.S. attorneys has impeded parts of Mr. Bush's agenda, notably the effort to expand wiretaps of terror suspects. The attorney general chose to use Congress's August recess period to put a stop to such distractions by ending his embattled term.

his August break, though, marks a broader turning point for the Bush presidency. Since Republicans lost control of Congress in last fall's elections, it has been an uphill struggle for Mr. Bush to move big items on his domestic agenda past an uncooperative legislature, or to shake the shadow of the war in Iraq. By his aides' own admission, those tasks will get even more difficult when Congress returns this fall.

Read the whole thing. The White House discounts the notion of declining influence in the remaining months of office:

A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, rejected the notion that the administration is losing momentum. "The term 'lame duck' is for dime-store political scientists," he said. "It demonstrates a misunderstanding of the power of the presidency, and a miscalculation of the energy and intentions of this president."

He said the White House has an "aggressive" agenda that will address an overhaul of surveillance laws, the Iraq war, spending, education and free trade, and he pointed to solid support among Republicans in Congress for blocking bad legislation, if necessary through upholding vetoes.

Whether the term "lame duck" has much meaning or not, the administration is certainly a far cry from the early-2005, post-reelection era of robust political capital.

Yet, I do think that given the nature of Congress' slim Democratic majority, and the central role the Iraq war will play over the next 15 months, the president is in a good position to set the debate, thwart the Democrats' big spending agenda, and help position GOP candidates for victories at all levels in November 2008.

Public opinion polls show Congress sustaining less public support than the administration. With additional victories in Iraq (and a reasonably good assessment on the war's progress by General Petraeus in September), the Democrats will be desperate to portray the war as a failure, and Bush can hammer their liberal lawmaking agenda with the veto. The appearance of gridlock will consolidate a "do-nothing" image for the "Pelos-tinians" in Congress, and the administration can shift attention to international diplomacy, and can develop an agenda to rebuild America's moral capital in global politics.

New Congress is King of Oversight

Thomas Mann, Molly Reynolds, and Peter Hoey have an interesting article in today's New York Times on the 110th Congress' comparative legislative productivity. Here's the introduction:

JUST before Congress adjourned for its August recess, Democrats engaged in a flurry of legislative activity, while Republicans complained about a “do-nothing” Congress’s meager policy accomplishments. Deep partisan differences, narrow majorities and a Republican in the White House have frustrated Democratic ambitions and fueled a toxic atmosphere in both chambers of Congress. The public’s low approval ratings reflect broad discontent with the direction of the country but also displeasure with Congress for failing to reverse course on Iraq and for continuing the bitter partisan warfare.

But has this really been a do-nothing Congress? The circumstances are similar to those in 1995, when a new Republican majority in both houses took office under a Democratic president. So perhaps the best question to ask is, how is this 110th Congress doing compared with the 104th Congress, in 1995?

The authors make the case that the new Democratic congressional majority has produced a more substantive legislative record than did the Republicans after 1994:

The new Congress has enacted a far-reaching lobbying and ethics reform bill, an increase in the minimum wage, recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, foreign investment rules and a competitiveness package, and has embedded a number of major initiatives and new priorities in continuing and supplemental spending bills. Democrats also made headway on energy, children’s health insurance, college student loans, Head Start, drug safety and a farm bill — though much of this awaits action in the Senate or in conference and faces a possible veto.

The tale of the tape is what I find interesting, however. Be sure to click here for the article's informative graphic, which includes a nice table of comparative statistics.

One of the biggest achievements of the new Congress is to ramp up the level of legislative oversight of the executive branch. While some have argued that Congress in recent years has been too deferential to the presidency (including Mann himself), the Democrats are probably less worried about the proper functioning of the separation of powers than they are about punishing Republicans for their ambitious, highly-partisan (even brazen) agenda of recent years.

Here's a nugget from the article:

Democratic promises to restore civility and regular parliamentary procedure by allowing the minority party a larger role in deliberations have foundered. The number of restrictive rules for debate has increased, and the conference process has been short-circuited on various occasions.

I've yet to see any sweeping legislative successes under the Democrats - for example, nothing as monumental as the Republican-led Welfare Reform Act of 1996.

Pelosi, Reid, and the Democrats appear in disarray over Iraq, and the administration's steadfast resolve on the war has kept the Republian Party's priorities at the top of the policy agenda.