When Bush announced his latest escalation policy for Iraq in a televised address a couple of weeks ago, he also mentioned that he’d like Congress to create a “new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.” Bush said it was a good idea — given to him by Joe Lieberman.
Congressional Dems didn’t much see the point. Lawmakers already have bi-partisan committees, in both chambers, for Armed Services, Intelligence, and Homeland Security. Why have yet another committee do the work existing committees are already doing? Reid and Pelosi responded to the president, in writing, explaining that they “welcome [his] expression of a willingness to work more cooperatively with Congress,” but respectfully added that “Congress already has bipartisan structures in place, like the committee system and other Congressional working groups such as the Senate’s National Security Working Group.”
According to a whiny column from Bob Novak, the Dems’ response showed them to be big meanies. Indeed, he called the Dems’ reply “rude.”
[Reid and Pelosi’s response] could be the most overt snub of a presidential overture since Abraham Lincoln was told that Gen. George B. McClellan had retired for the night and could not see him. Courtesy aside, it shows that the self-confident Democratic leadership is uninterested in being cut into potentially disastrous outcomes in Iraq. It wants to function as a coordinate branch of government, not as friendly colleagues in the spirit of bipartisanship.
Now, Bob Novak has been in Washington for quite a while now, and he’s seen more than a few presidents make requests of Congress that lawmakers rejected. This isn’t terribly unusual stuff here. To hear Novak tell it, the definition of “rude” is “anytime Democrats say no to the president.”
For that matter, for Novak or anyone else to complain that congressional Democrats want to “function as a coordinate branch of government” is kind of silly. Of course that’s how they want to function. Novak’s beef seems to be with Article I of the Constitution, not Reid and Pelosi.
Novak went on to whine about Dems’ motives.
Bush made a mistake in attributing the idea to Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who as the Senate’s only self-identified Independent Democrat is estranged from his colleagues who are unmodified Democrats. These former comrades are not charmed by the prospect of Lieberman pontificating as a member of the “working group” by virtue of his chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
But Lieberman was not the reason for the speaker and majority leader’s rebuff. The Democratic leadership is beyond consultation on Iraq.
So, Reid and Pelosi rejected the idea out of spite for Lieberman? Is it so inconceivable that perhaps it’s just a bad idea, which even congressional Republicans have been slow to embrace? Novak’s own explanation is self-contradictory — Dems want to try and silence Lieberman, which is why they made him chairman of a key Senate committee. Or something. It doesn’t quite make any sense.
And as for the idea that Dems are “beyond consultation on Iraq,” how would anyone know? Has Bush ever tried consulting with congressional Dems on Iraq policy?
Even by Novak standards, this one just doesn’t make any sense.