Bush Blocking Fitzgerald Cooperation

David Rogers writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) that the "best shot for Democrats is to . . . build coalitions with moderate Republicans to complete Congress's agenda before the holidays. But the bitter divisions with President Bush over the Iraq war make that more difficult.

"'The more they take Bush to the woodshed on Iraq, the more difficult it is to bring over moderate Republicans,' says Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster.

"Compounding the problem are the moods swings and often combative nature of the Democratic leadership. Republicans tend to march four abreast, even if it means heading off a political cliff as in the 1995 government shutdown; Democrats resemble a family packed into a station wagon and yelling different directions at the driver."

Bush took to the Rose Garden this morning to briefly revisit some of his more familiar talking points.

Feeding Frenzy

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Robert Pear writes in the New York Times: "Business lobbyists, nervously anticipating Democratic gains in next year's elections, are racing to secure final approval for a wide range of health, safety, labor and economic rules, in the belief that they can get better deals from the Bush administration than from its successor.

"Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements."

National Debt Watch

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A reminder from Tom Raum of the Associated Press: "Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute. . . .

"[T]he government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion. . . .

"[T]he interest payments keep compounding, and could in time squeeze out most other government spending -- leading to sharply higher taxes or a cut in basic services like Social Security and other government benefit programs. Or all of the above. . . .

"The national debt -- the total accumulation of annual budget deficits -- is up from $5.7 trillion when President Bush took office in January 2001 and it will top $10 trillion sometime right before or right after he leaves in January 2009.

"That's $10,000,000,000,000.00, or one digit more than an odometer-style 'national debt clock' near New York's Times Square can handle. When the privately owned automated clock was activated in 1989, the national debt was $2.7 trillion. . . .

"Not long ago, it actually looked like the national debt could be paid off -- in full. In the late 1990s, the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office projected a surplus of a $5.6 trillion over ten years -- and calculated the debt would be paid off as early as 2006."

Bush v. Cheney, Iraq Edition

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Massimo Calabresi writes in Time about the "split that has opened up between Bush and his hard-line Veep. Since 2001, Cheney has been against just the kind of U.S. involvement in Arab-Israeli affairs that Bush is embracing, arguing that the early creation of a Palestinian state could jeopardize Israel's security. And the peace talks are part of a larger trend. In the past two years, Bush has negotiated with the North Koreans over their nuclear weapons and offered the Iranians incentives to talk about their nuclear ambitions, sometimes directly overruling Cheney and his allies in the process. Skeptics say the flurry of diplomacy is designed to distract attention from the war in Iraq. But whatever the motivation, the result is clear: if the spectrum of Republican foreign policy has Cheney and the unilateralists at one end and Bush's father George H.W. Bush and the multilateralists at the other, then W. has come home."

Calabresi adds: "To be sure, Bush isn't as good a diplomat as he thinks he is. He likes to tout two tactics: a hard-knuckle approach he credits with bringing the North Koreans to the table, and the personal rapport he claims to have developed with leaders like Russia's Vladimir Putin. Being able to look fellow leaders in the eye and call them by their first name, Bush thinks, makes it easier to put tough demands on the table. But foreign diplomats say he lacks subtlety in both approaches, forcing black-and-white decisions on adversaries and focusing on individual leaders instead of their countries' interests."

Paul Richter writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Bush has defied a diplomatic consensus reaching back decades by insisting that the United States would encourage Israelis and Palestinians and would offer ideas if asked, but wouldn't sit continuously at a negotiating table or establish positions of its own.

"The conventional approach, based on more active American prodding, simply 'hasn't worked,' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared recently. In calling world leaders together for last week's conference in Annapolis, Md., the Bush administration made it clear it has its own approach.

"But the administration's insistence on a limited U.S. role is one of the reasons behind widespread skepticism about the likelihood of the talks resulting in a peace agreement and an independent Palestinian state by the end of Bush's term. Most European and Arab diplomats believe a more activist U.S. stance is essential to progress."

Bush v. Cheney, Iran Edition

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Dan Ephron, Michael Hirsh and Evan Thomas write for Newsweek: "Late this summer, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates traveled to the Middle East, to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. At each stop, high-ranking Arab officials anxiously asked him: was the United States preparing to attack Iran? Gates reassured them all that the United States had no plans to do so, at least any time soon. He wasn't dramatic about it, says a Defense Department official who accompanied Gates on the trip but declined to be identified discussing secret talks. 'He didn't grab anyone's arm and say, 'I've got Cheney under control, wink, wink',' says this official. But Gates was low-key, straightforward, steadying--calming, even soothing in a dry and matter-of-fact way. A little later, at the end of September, Gates met with the Democratic Senate Policy Committee (something his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, would never do). One of the senators nervously asked if the Bush administration was looking for a reason to bomb Tehran. 'It would be a strategic calamity to attack Iran at this time,' Gates replied. Sen. Evan Bayh, who was at the meeting, told Newsweek: 'You could almost feel the relief around the table. . . .

"Right now, Gates is seen as the best insurance that the Bush administration (read: Vice President Cheney) will not leave a legacy of ashes in Iran."

No word yet on why Cheney wasn't able to edit, squelch or at least further delay today's release of the national intelligence estimate that Iran is not currently moving towards a nuclear capability.

About That Signing Statement

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Charlie Savage writes in the Boston Globe that Bush in November "issued his first signing statement since the Democratic takeover of Congress, reserving the right to bypass 11 provisions in a military appropriations bill under his executive powers."

The Nov. 13 statement objected to "several requirements to provide information to Congress. . .

"For example, one law Bush targeted requires him to give oversight committees notice before transferring US military equipment to United Nations peacekeepers.

"Bush also challenged a new law that limits his ability to transfer funds lawmakers approved for one purpose to start a different program, as well as a law requiring him to keep in place an existing command structure for the Navy's Pacific fleet."

Savage notes: "By referring only to objections voiced in past documents, Bush's new signing statement struck a less aggressive tone than those he issued during the years when his own party controlled Congress."

Small Ball

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Peter Baker wrote on washingtonpost.com on Friday: "A senior White House official acknowledged yesterday that President Bush has little chance of passing major legislation through a hostile Congress in his last 13 months in office but will still pursue a 'very vigorous agenda' through executive action and foreign policy leadership.

"White House counselor Ed Gillespie said the death of a bipartisan immigration plan last summer convinced Bush advisers that they had to readjust their approach through the final phase of his presidency, focusing on ambitious goals on the international front while downscaling to more small-bore but achievable initiatives domestically."

It's worth noting that what killed the immigration plan was not the rise of Democrats, but the revolt by Republicans.

Climate Change Watch

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Peter Gelling and Andrew C. Revkin write in the New York Times: "Thousands of government officials, industry lobbyists, environmental campaigners and observers are arriving on the Indonesian island of Bali for two weeks of talks starting Monday that are aimed at breathing new life into the troubled 15-year-old global climate treaty. . . .

"By far, the biggest obstacle to forging a new accord by 2009 is the United States, analysts say. Senior Bush administration officials say the administration will not agree to a new treaty with binding limits on emissions.

"Instead, President Bush recently proposed that the world's biggest countries work toward a common, long-term goal set decades in the future, without specific targets or limits, and more immediate goals set by individual nations using whatever means they choose. . . .

"'The Bush administration is the only government in the world that is opposed to mandatory emissions reductions being included in a new treaty,' said Philip Clapp, the deputy managing director of the Pew Environment Group, based in Washington. 'The question is, will they block others from moving forward.'"

Kim Chipman, Mathew Carr and Alex Morales write for Bloomberg: "Seven years after he lost the U.S. election, Al Gore has more influence on U.S. global warming policy than the man who defeated him, President George W. Bush. . . .

"As talks on a new world emissions treaty open today on the Indonesian island of Bali, companies and investors such as General Electric Co., Chevron Corp. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. are backing Gore's push for global limits on climate- changing carbon emissions, a strategy Bush opposes. . . .

"Anticipating the post-Bush diplomatic era, a shadow delegation of American business and political leaders will advocate mandatory limits."

The New York Times editorial board writes: "The days ahead will tell a lot about whether the world, and especially the United States, is prepared to do more than just talk about the problem. . . .

"As the dominant producer of heat-trapping gases, the United States cannot expect other countries to make costly investments in new ways of producing and using energy unless it acts decisively at home."

Over at NiemanWatchdog.org (where I am deputy editor) Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists poses several simple questions about warming that the White House simply won't answer.

Cartoon Watch

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Ann Telnaes on Rove's experiments with history; Tom Toles on Bush's Mid-east turnaround.