[Dialogue] Bipartisanship on Hold

[Harry Wainwright]

 <http://www.nytimes.com/>  <http://www.nytimes.com/> The New York Times
<http://www.nytimes.com/> 

 




  _____  

November 10, 2006

Editorial

Bipartisanship on Hold 

President Bush was back on TV yesterday, without the scowl he'd been
sporting the day after the election but with the surviving members of his
Cabinet. He talked about how much he was looking forward to lunching with
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and working on "the great issues facing
America." Mr. Bush said his team would "respect the results" of the
election. 

Just maybe not right away.

Without missing a beat, Mr. Bush made it clear that, for now, his idea of
how to "put the elections behind us" is to use the Republicans' last two
months in control of Congress to try to push through one of the worst ideas
his administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill have come up
with: a bill that would legalize his illegal wiretapping program and gut the
law that limits a president's ability to abuse his power in this way.

Mr. Bush listed his priorities for the forthcoming lame duck session of
Congress. It was an odd list that included only two really urgent items -
the bills that keep federal money flowing and the nomination of Robert Gates
as the next secretary of defense. The rest was a grab bag that included one
worthy but hardly urgent idea (getting Vietnam into the World Trade
Organization) and a series of ideas ranging from bad to truly awful that Mr.
Bush has been unable to get through Congress and hopes to ram through in the
Republicans' last weeks.

For example, he wants the Senate to ratify his recess appointment of John
Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. That vote, which is likely to be
strongly debated, can easily wait for the new Congress, and should. Mr. Bush
also pressed for quick passage of "the bipartisan energy legislation," which
had Congressional officials scratching their heads in puzzlement about which
bill he might mean. And he wants immediate approval of his administration's
deal to sell civilian nuclear technology to India despite that nation's
refusal to sign or abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

That was a bad idea from the start. But the wiretapping bill is simply
outrageous, and it has no business being discussed in this lame duck
session.

The bill Mr. Bush wants was drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyers
and by Senator Arlen Specter, the outgoing Republican chairman of the
Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter presented it as a compromise that would
regulate the president's ability to spy on Americans' phone calls and e-mail
without a court order. It really was a cave-in to Mr. Bush's effort to
expand his power beyond limits that have existed for nearly 30 years. 

Mr. Bush has acknowledged that he authorized the National Security Agency to
conduct certain kinds of domestic wiretapping without obtaining the warrant
required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He has claimed
that the law hindered the hunt for terrorists, but has not offered a scrap
of evidence for that claim. He has also never described the program's
overall scope, and almost none of the lawmakers who will vote on this bill
if Mr. Bush has his way have any idea what it entails.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is one of the few
members who does know, has said there is nothing in the program that could
not be done legally. She has proposed a more modest bill that would give the
government more flexibility to eavesdrop first and get permission later. But
Mr. Bush is not interested. He wants the bill that would gut the law,
absolve him of illegal behavior and turn over the task of determining the
constitutionality of his program to a court that is not equipped to make
that judgment. 

Since the White House has continued the wiretapping without legislative
approval, there is no conceivable reason why Mr. Bush should see this as an
emergency. His real motive could be to create a bargaining chip that would
allow him to get a narrower bill giving the telephone companies immunity for
helping the administration conduct the unlawful eavesdropping. That's an
absurdly bad idea.

There are plenty of responsible lawmakers in both parties who are
sympathetic to the idea that the executive branch needed more flexibility to
pursue terrorists after 9/11. It has been obvious all along that if the
president feels current law is too restrictive, he should explain its
shortcomings to members of Congress and ask them to amend it. The Republican
majority was never going to insist on that, but the new Democratic
leadership might.

The White House refuses to explain itself because this has never been about
catching terrorists. It is about overturning the crucial limits placed on
executive authority after Watergate and Vietnam. Mr. Cheney and a few other
hard-liners have been trying to turn back the clock and have succeeded in
some truly scary ways, including the military commissions act they pushed
through Congress before the elections. It is vital that they not be allowed
to do any more harm.

 

Copyright <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html>
2006 The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>  

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