Longing for the Land of Beer and Chocolate

By Al Kamen
Friday, January 11, 2008

One of President Bush's most high-profile recess appointees, Ambassador to the European Union C. Boyden Gray-- is back in Washington and, for the moment, out of a job.

Gray was given a recess appointment to the Brussels job two years ago after then-minority Senate Democrats blocked his confirmation. Gray, White House counsel under Bush I, had infuriated Democrats by leading a campaign for confirmation of several conservative Bush judicial nominations.

That appointment expired last week, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has effectively eliminated the presidential power to make recess appointments.

But Gray still may be returning to Brussels.

There is buzz that the White House wants to name Gray as Bush's "special envoy" to the European Union, a position that doesn't require Senate confirmation and apparently would not give him supervisory authority over mission officials.

Wait a minute. Didn't Bush's first National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD1) abolish all these special envoys? That may mean Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has to give special permission for Gray's new appointment.

Gray probably is allowed to have an office at the mission -- hey, the ambassador's office is empty! -- but it's unclear whether he'll live in the ambassador's residence. A section in the State Department's manual appears to say he can't. (Of course Gray, heir to a tobacco fortune, can afford to rent a decent condo, or a palace, for the next year.) Reid, through a spokesman, said yesterday that he "strongly opposes giving Gray all the perks of a position he no longer holds, that such a move would violate the spirit of" a recent Senate-White House agreement on recess appointments and that it "may have reverberations in terms of the White House's ability to actually confirm ambassadors." As the election nears, of course, that ability is minimal at best.

There remains the question of why Gray, a high-powered Washington lawyer and policy wonk, wants to go back to the oft-somnolent E.U. job. Maybe he likes Brussels? Maybe it's near Paris?

Ship Guaranteed to List to Starboard

Pollsters and pundits, embarrassed though they may be this week, insist that Democrats are much more energized than Republicans about their presidential prospects next November. The war's a drag. The economy looks increasingly shaky, etc.

There's a ready pick-me-up for the downcast. Yes, it's the Weekly Standard's annual week-long cruise, this year heading March 24 from Florida to St. Thomas and back. The voyage is billed as "a week's worth of the best conversation about the 2008 elections anywhere (land or sea)."

The magazine's usual suspects -- publisher Terry Eastland, editor and new New York Times columnist William Kristol, executive editor Fred Barnes-- will join some 200 well-heeled conservatives on the party-till-you-drop jaunt.

But the real draws for political junkies will be folks such as GOP political consultant Mike Murphy-- neutral now because he's tight with both John McCain and Mitt Romney. (Didn't we see him in New Hampshire the other day hanging with McCain?) Make sure you have a few with Murphy.

There's also former solicitor general Ted Olson, who's been advising the Rudy Giuliani campaign. That campaign may not be with us by March, but you can talk with Olson about legal stuff -- the Indiana voter ID case at the Supreme Court and such.

And John Podhoretz, a Standard founding father and now movie critic and author of: "Can She Be Stopped?: Hillary Clinton Will Be the Next President of the United States Unless . . ." His book offers a 10-point plan, No. 10 being: "Nominate Rudy." Giuliani "represents the best hope the Republicans have of defeating Hillary Clinton," he writes. Well, if Giuliani is out by cruise time, and Clinton is the Democratic nominee, could be a downer talking to him.

Hurry. Cruise folks said yesterday there's only a few cheapo suites left. Thanks perhaps to the excellent Bush tax cuts, the $20,000-per-couple big suites, which come with a butler so it feels just like home, are long sold out. All that's left are the smaller $8,000-per-couple suites. Sorry, no butler.

But wait. Did we mention the "complimentary beverages," including wine and booze "served throughout the ship"? The casino? The limbo contest?

It's Maine. Who's Going to Notice?

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart W. Bowen Jr., whose own office is under investigation by the FBI and three other entities for waste and mismanagement, raised a few eyebrows last week when he showed up in Maine with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and told the state's leading paper she was the "most consistent and effective supporter of our oversight in Iraq."

Collins is in a tight reelection battle in a blue state where the war, and her prior support for it, could be a critical factor. Last year she helped save Bowen's office, which has exposed enormous waste and fraud in the Iraq rebuilding effort, after House Republicans tried to kill it.

Bowen, a former top aide to President Bush in Texas, last week went to Maine with Collins to speak at a college and then joined her at an editorial board meeting of the Portland Press Herald-Maine Sunday Telegram, where he praised her for supporting him.

His trip didn't go unnoticed in Washington. A senior State Department official said he was "puzzled" by Bowen's appearance alongside Collins. "I wondered what he was doing," the official said. "This is the kind of thing we're taught not to do."

Bowen, who often speaks to groups and editorial boards about his office's work, would have accepted an invitation to speak at the college whether Collins went or not, IG spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said yesterday. The newspaper apparently then invited both of them to meet with the editorial board, she said.

Wait till he shows up in Minnesota with Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), an equally embattled blue-state lawmaker, to praise his work on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.