The Uncompromising Mr. Bush and the Last Filibuster Compromise He Ignored

This is a good piece in the WaPo by Carl M. Cannon. To me, the issue isn't the labeling of Dems as obstructionist, but a president who has never conceded on anything.

Big tax breaks for the rich don't work? Well, keep doing em, he insists. War in Iraq going bad? Don't change a thing, he says. Majority of Americans saying they want more scrutiny exercised on his judicial nominees? Tough, says Bush, I'll appoint you I want and fuck anybody in Congress who asks 'em a question.

Before good-government types go all weak in the knees about the Great Filibuster Compromise of 2005, they might do well to recall the Great Filibuster Compromise of 2004.

Don't remember that one? That's understandable: It didn't change anything.

That deal, which was reached last May, guaranteed up-or-down votes on 25 Bush judicial nominees in exchange for a promise that the White House wouldn't bypass the Senate by making any more of those dastardly recess appointments to the bench. Those 25 judges were confirmed, bringing President Bush's total to nearly 200, in line with other recent presidents. According to a 2003 report from the Congressional Research Service, Ronald Reagan had 163 judges confirmed in his first term, Bill Clinton had 200 and Bush's father, in his only term, won approval for 191 of his judicial nominees.

But the compromise had no real effect at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Bush simply pressed ahead last year with his intention to put his stamp on the federal judiciary, naming the same kinds of conservatives after the 2004 deal -- and after his re-election -- as he had before. Sometimes he renominated the very same people who had been turned down earlier, reviving antagonisms with Democrats.

If anything, Bush redoubled his efforts, spurred on by the election campaign and the fight over gay marriage. "This difficult debate was forced upon our country by a few activist judges . . . who have taken it on themselves to change the meaning of marriage," he declared in his weekly radio address last July 11. Then he went off to a wedding -- of the very traditional kind -- in Georgetown. During that same week, he journeyed to Michigan to publicize the fact that all four of his nominees to the appellate courts from that state had been waiting two years for a vote; three were still awaiting action by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

What's to stop Bush from following the same course this year? Not much.