Looking back at Bush’s first term, there wasn’t much the White House requested but didn’t receive. Even when there was some initial hesitation and skepticism, it was usually only a matter of time before Bush leaned on some GOP holdouts and got what he wanted.
This term is starting out a little differently — and it’s not just Social Security.
Almost everywhere President Bush traveled on the campaign trail last year, he lashed out at plaintiffs’ lawyers for filing “junk lawsuits” that he said were sending the cost of health care out of sight.
These days the president rarely mentions the topic, and the effort in Congress to rein in medical malpractice litigation has stalled, according to proponents and opponents of the bill.
“The Senate is deadlocked,” said Lawrence E. Smarr, president of the Physician Insurers Association of America, one of dozens of health care groups that are working in coalition to promote Bush’s plan. “They’re at loggerheads on the basic bill.”
“They don’t have the votes, and they won’t get the votes,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), a staunch adversary of the president’s drive.
Jeffrey Birnbaum and John Harris identified some of the reasons the bill, which seemed to be poised for smooth sailing through Republican-led chambers, stalled. I think they’re on the right track, but missed an over-arching point.
They noted, for example, that there’s some Republican opposition to the bill, which makes a Dem filibuster hard to get around.
“We are still seven or eight votes away in the Senate from getting that magical number 60,” said Christian Shalgian, chief lobbyist for the American College of Surgeons and chairman of the Health Coalition on Liability and Access, the major lobbying coalition siding with Bush on medical malpractice issues.
There’s also some concern on the GOP side of the aisle about crossing swords with trial lawyers twice in one year.
Quick passage of the class-action bill, which Bush signed into law Feb. 18, was “both good and bad news,” a senior business lobbyist said. It was good for industry that class-action legislation passed at all, he said, because it represented a small but meaningful victory over the hard-to-defeat plaintiffs’ bar. But it was bad news, he added, because many lawmakers are loath to whack the powerful trial-lawyer lobby more than once in a single year.
I think both of these elements are true and are having an effect, but I also believe Bush’s flailing poll numbers are at play.
Here’s an issue that, unlike Social Security, the president actually campaigned on. It enjoys relatively strong support in the polls and is a standard item on any GOP wish list. And yet, despite Bush’s repeated demands and public appearances on the issue, congressional approval at this point seems remote.
Ask yourself: what’s different between Bush getting everything he asked for in his first term and suddenly facing resistance in his second? Before, Bush enjoyed relatively strong poll numbers and was mounting an aggressive re-election campaign. Now his standing has fallen considerably — poll numbers remain in the mid 40s — and he’s a lame-duck.
“He’s up against a case of classic second term-itis,” said Kevin Phillips, an analyst who is a frequent critic of Mr. Bush. “Which means that members of his own party aren’t paying a lot of attention to him.”
With weak support, Dems don’t fear Bush and Republicans can’t count on his efforts to get them through their own re-election fights. Moreover, with an expiration date looming over Bush’s second term, many on the Hill are already pondering post-Bush government.
With this in mind, the president who’s not accustomed to losing should probably start getting prepared for some disappointment.