It looks like the president believes his misleading attacks will sound more credible if he repeats them over and over again. For the third time in as many days, Bush appeared before cameras to blast House Democrats for not giving him the surveillance powers he wants.
“The Senate passed a good bipartisan bill that makes sure our intelligence community has the tools necessary to protect America from this real threat — and I want to thank you all, and thank the Democrats in the United States Senate who worked closely with Mitch and John to get a strong piece of legislation, with a 68-vote majority, out of the Senate.
“And this bill comes to the House of Representatives and it was blocked. And by blocking this piece of legislation our country is more in danger of an attack. By not giving the professionals the tools they need, it’s going to be a lot harder to do the job we need to be able to defend America.
“People say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter if this law hasn’t been renewed’ — it does matter. It matters for a variety of reasons. It matters because the intelligence officials won’t have tools necessary to get as much information as we possibly can to protect you. […]
“[T]he House leaders must understand that the decision they made to block good legislation has made it harder for us to protect you, the American people, and we expect them to get a good bill to my desk — which is the Senate bill — as soon as possible.”
Bush didn’t get what he wants, so we should all panic. That, in effect, is the argument. All of this is wrong, of course — the administration’s talking points are almost incredibly misleading — but demagoguery has gotten the Bush gang this far, and they don’t see any reason to change their m.o.
And to their enormous credit, House Democrats — who one might expect to be caving right now — don’t seem the slightest bit fazed by the president’s bogus argument.
Here’s a statement Speaker Pelosi issued today:
“The President is misrepresenting the facts on our nation’s electronic surveillance capabilities. Last August, he insisted that Congress pass the Protect America Act; but this week, he refused to support an extension, which can only mean he knows our intelligence agencies will be able to do all the wiretapping they need to do to protect the nation. That surveillance can be undertaken under broad orders authorized under the PAA or under orders that can be obtained through the FISA court.
“The President knows the facts; if he did not want the PAA to expire this weekend, he should have supported an extension of it, as the overwhelming majority of House Democrats did on Wednesday. Having guaranteed the lapse of the August law, the President should now work in a cooperative way with Congress to pass a strong FISA modernization bill that protects our nation’s security and the Constitution.”
I think we’ve all come to expect the Dems to fold like a house of cards when the president starts telling the nation that unless Congress gives him everything he wants, when he wants it, we’re all going to die. But this week, Pelosi & Co. refused to play the game.
As one Democratic Hill staffer put it:
I can’t remember which show it was – something like the Brady Bunch – where the protagonist is being picked on by a bully and at a certain point lashes out and inadvertently bloodies the bully’s nose (and ends the bully’s tyrannical reign, etc). It seems that the House may have inadvertently done just this. In the face of an all-too-familiar pattern of administration fear mongering instead of cowardly acceding to the administration’s wishes (and tacitly reinforcing the effectiveness of the administration’s fearmongering) the House seems, through something other than a concerted response, to have stumbled into a situation where they have bloodied the administration’s nose. Short of cancelling his Africa trip and spending all of next week demagoging this issue, I don’t see how the admin keeps their credibility on this. A line has been crossed.
It’s about time.