2fer: TNR on Ari Fleischer

[Moses]

WASHINGTON DIARIST
Fool's Gold
by Jonathan Chait


| Issue date 03.28.05

I have always believed that Ari Fleischer is a duplicitous genius. During his tenure as White House press secretary, he elevated the mundane practice of misleading reporters and avoiding their questions into an art form. There was the vast array of topics he declared off-limits. These included questions about foreign countries ("You'd have to ask Pakistan") and questions about domestic concerns for which some other executive department could be said to be responsible ("I would refer you to the Department of Justice"). Precluded topics also included speculation about things that hadn't happened yet, rehashing things that had already happened and that the president was looking past, and questions about things that were happening right at the moment. His face never betrayed even the wildest prevarications. Every word that escaped his mouth was delivered in the same bland, bored tone, like a middle-school teacher explaining cell division to a class of particularly dim students. ...

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[Moses]

TNR on "pugilistic liberal left", and Senate Democrats as nervous nellies:


April 17, 2005   <br>ON THE HILL
The Day After
by Michael Crowley
  <br>
Post date 04.15.05 | Issue date 04.18.05  <br>
Not since the Cuban missile crisis has Washington been so braced for the possibility of nuclear war. But this time, the nukes are figurative: Everyone is waiting to see whether Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist can muster the 51 votes he needs to trigger the so-called "nuclear option" and change the Senate's rules to prevent Democrats from filibustering judicial nominees.  <br>
But, even as reporters buttonhole every fence-sitting Republican to parse their latest thoughts about the nuclear option, few people are talking about what would follow Frist's mushroom cloud. Call it nuclear winter: the scenario in which Democrats retaliate by exploiting Senate procedures to plunge the institution into chaos and prevent anything from getting accomplished. Think Mad Max Goes to Washington. "We will deny Republicans the bipartisan cooperation that allows the Senate to function effectively," says Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. Translation: You want to rename a post office? Better allow a couple days for it. As People for the American Way President Ralph Neas, a key organizer of liberal resistance to the nuclear option, puts it, "Detonating a nuclear weapon will have nuclear fallout." <br>
This is classic deterrence theory at work. Democrats are talking about political Armageddon in the hope that Republicans will chicken out. Unfortunately, it's easier for Democrats to threaten dire consequences than it would be to enact them. Because, while Democrats feel they are morally justified in shutting down the Senate, some are concluding that, as political a matter, the strategy is too radioactive to handle. <br>

 <br>
Democrats certainly have the power to shut down the Senate. Virtually all of the chamber's business is conducted with the "unanimous consent" of all 100 senators. Usually that's a formality. But a senator always has the power to stand up and raise a procedural objection that requires a majority vote to dismiss. Senators rarely exercise such power because it infuriates their colleagues and, if everyone did it, nothing would ever get done. Reid and company could start raising nonstop objections, however--forcing multiple votes on, say, a resolution congratulating the national champion University of North Carolina basketball team. Frist would have to keep 51 friendly senators near the Senate floor to accomplish anything, which is about as easy as keeping dozens of grasshoppers in an uncovered box. The Senate rarely operates smoothly. But, in a nuclear winter, it would be about as efficient as your average Department of Motor Vehicles--and about as pleasant.  <br>
A few weeks ago, it sounded like Democrats were ready to implement this scorched-earth strategy. In mid-March, Reid sent Frist a letter warning that, "hould the majority choose to break the rules ... the majority should not expect to receive cooperation from the minority in the conduct of Senate business." The letter was accompanied by a defiant rally of Senate Democrats on the Capitol steps. Republican senators--and the press--treated Reid's letter as a pledge to burn down the Senate. "senate work may come to halt if gop bars judicial filibusters," The Washington Post reported. Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley told The Hill that, if Democrats were going to render the Senate inoperable, Republicans might as well pack up and leave town. <br>
The specter of a shutdown certainly pleased the pugilistic liberal left. But it seems to have spooked Senate Democrats, who now emphasize all the things they don't intend to block, like bills dealing with national security or "critical government services." Where their tone was once bellicose, Democratic staffers are now circumspect. The initial response "was a little too overblown," says Manley. "There never was an intention to shut down the government." But other Democrats say it's clear that some nervous backtracking is underway. Says one aide to a Senate Judiciary Committee member: "They did a showdown press conference and got showdown headlines, and then said, 'Oh my God, what just happened?' Well, what do you expect?" <br>
Why the skittishness? Perhaps because Republicans like Grassley quickly offered a shrewd response: that Democrats were threatening to "shut down the government," a phrase that evokes the disastrous budget showdown the Gingrich Republicans forced with the Clinton White House in 1995. Gingrich's game of budget chicken led to the shutdown of national parks and museums and inflicted serious political damage on the GOP. Democrats insist they would never let things reach that point--that they will pick their battles carefully and will not stop essential budget appropriations bills. "We've learned lessons from 1995," says Manley. <br>
But it's the budget that consumes most of Congress's time. So what are the Democrats willing to hold up? There aren't many good targets. Republicans have already passed major class-action and bankruptcy reform bills--a source of grumbling among some Democrats who feel like Reid, who did not fight those bills all-out, should have done more to leverage them against the nuclear option. "Now that the Republicans have gotten all their agenda items through, they can afford to piss off their business backers" who are always trying to pass pet provisions, says one Democratic strategist. Meanwhile, some Democrats complain that Reid's promised exception for "national security" legislation was a blunder. "From a tactical perspective, Reid made a mistake," adds the strategist. "He created a litmus test for national security. Well, suddenly everything becomes vital to our national security." And, with the apparent demise of Bush's Social Security plan, there aren't many other major Republican agenda items left. 

Even a pork bonanza like the $284 billion highway spending bill would seem to pose too many hazards for obstruction-inclined Democrats. "Do they really want to go back to their states and say, 'Yeah, I know you're not getting the road funding that you wanted, and it's all because of a judge'?" asks an aide to one leading pro-nuke Republican senator. "I don't see it." Neither, it seems, do some conservative Democrats. For instance, according to David DiMartino, a spokesman for Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, who faces a potentially tough reelection in bright-red Nebraska next year, Nelson is "concerned" about the prospect of a gummed-up Senate because "we have so many important bills that have not been passed. All these things that are so important to Nebraska, like the highway bill, the energy bill, corn subsidies. These are things he really wants to get done this year. I don't think he's looking forward to that kind of atmosphere." 

Even if Democrats undertook a shutdown (or slowdown) strategy, it's not clear how long they would feel bound to enforce it. "That's the big question nobody has asked," says the GOP aide. "If they say a month, well, who gives a nuts? And if it's until the end of [2006], it's ridiculous and untenable." 

 <br>
Meanwhile, some Democrats are now pushing for strategies that look less like obstructionism--a word that makes them jittery after last year's defeat of former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. (The role the GOP's "obstructionist" label played in Daschle's loss has been exaggerated, but that doesn't mean many Democrats want to chance it.) A potentially more promising post-nuclear strategy for Democrats may be to hijack the Senate agenda rather than paralyze it. (Senate rules actually allow the minority more power to bring up bills than most people realize, but collegial norms mean it almost never happens.) "It would be great to have eight to ten bills we could do over and over again and just sort of drill the Democratic agenda into the public's head," says an aide to one Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat. "Every time they bring up a corporate relief bill, we'd bring up a minimum wage bill. Every time they bring up a bankruptcy bill, we'd bring up a health care bill. I think that's a better strategy than objecting every five seconds and adjourning every five seconds."  <br>
Of course, even some of the Democrats crafting these alternative plans view them much as Americans once viewed their basement fallout shelters: something they hope they'll never use. And, while Frist has made some gains of late--such as winning over Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell, a respected GOP elder who had been a key holdout--there remain enough Republican moderates and traditionalists with doubts about the nuclear option that a showdown does not yet appear imminent. That's good news for Democrats. Given their uncertainty about how to deal with a post-nuclear Senate, an increasing number are desperately hoping that Frist's bomb never detonates. [/b'

Michael Crowley is a senior editor at TNR.