Thu - June 24, 2004 at 10:20 AM in

Bush Better Win Big


The Republicans haven't been shy about throwing their weight around as the majority party in both the House and the Senate the last two years. While this (arguably) has helped them advance their legislative agenda, it has earned them no friends among the Democrats. There's a downside to this, especially with a President who has been parsing the word "torture" in much the same fashion Clinton parsed the word "sex."

Should Bush win in November, he also needs to hold on to both the House and Senate. This may be hard, given that Americans seem to prefer divided government. If the Democrats win either the House or the Senate, then the balance of power shifts on important committees which have the authority and mandate to investigate things like the torture memo(s).

Democrats have already been claiming that the recent document dump was incomplete and selective (for example, I understand from news reports that the released documents included nothing from the State Department, nothing to or from the FBI or CIA, and nothing after April 2002--all glaring omissions). Should the Democrats take control of either the House or the Senate, one of the first likely events will be a congressional subpoena demanding the missing memos.

This puts the Bush administration in a no-win situation. The best case scenario for them is that there truly is nothing to hide, and they turn over the documents in response to the subpoena, and after a few weeks of shouting the country moves on to something else. This isn't likely to satisfy Democrats, though, who will probably follow up with additional investigations and subpoenas, keeping Bush's second term under a perpetual cloud of almost-scandal.

Should the Bush administration choose to fight the subpoena, not only does it set up a constitutional showdown, they give the appearance of having something to hide. This administration has never seemed to care about outward appearances, however, so it is likely they'll fight the subpoena and lose (given the precedents set during Watergate).

The worst case scenario is if there really is something to hide. It is very unlikely that the administration would be able to stop a congressional investigation, though they could slow it down for a while through court challenges and claims of executive privilege. Delaying tactics don't play well in Peoria, however. Once other congressional Republicans start sensing that they have more to lose politically by backing the President than by distancing themselves, the wheels come off the bus very quickly.

So how will this play out? I don't know. But it is clear that by being so fiercely partisan, the Republicans have burned a lot of goodwill with congressional Democrats. This can only hurt the Republicans should they lose control of either house of Congress.

Posted at 10:20 AM   Permalink      

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