H ouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently pronounced George W. Bush a “total failure,” which is like Jesse Jackson criticizing someone for not controlling his tongue. While it is true that the majority of the American people have lost confidence in Bush (his approval rating has fallen to 29 percent), their opinion of Pelosi and her ilk is even worse. Congress now has the lowest approval rating ever recorded: nine percent.
That may be because Americans understand what Pelosi hopes they don’t: A president can fail the American people only if Congress allows it.
For insance, Pelosi numbers the warin Iraq among Bush’s failings. But as Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the 1952 case regarding presidential powers (resulting from Harry Truman’s attempt to control steel mills during the Korean War), “Congress alone controls the raising of revenues and their appropriation and may determine in what manner and by what means they shall be spent for military and navy personnel. [The president] has no monopoly on war powers‚ whatever they are. While Congress cannot deprive the president of the command of the army and navy, only Congress can provide him any army or navy to command.”
If Pelosi is so convinced that the war in Iraq is a failure, why did she shepherd through Congress last month a $162 billion emergency spending bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? “The majority of the American people have come to see this war as a costly mistake that needs to be brought to a close,” said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. “This legislation brings us no closer to that goal.”
Pelosi did not thwart the president’s war-spending bill; she engineered its success. How does that make Bush a failure?
Pelosi also cites the troubled economy as one of the president’s failings, but the escalated costs of living reflect primarily the high price of oil fromthe Middle East. Yet Pelosi has devoted much of her career to ensuring American dependence on foreign oil. She remains an ardent opponent of offshore drilling — restrictions that even some Democrats are now rethinking — and likely would prevent a vote on expanded drilling from reaching the House floor. The speaker also is opposed to allowing oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
So if she is determined to keep the United States hostage to Middle Eastern oil producers, by what contorted logic does she attribute that failure to Bush?
The one area in which even many conservatives agree Bush has been a failure is the protection of civil liberties. He has used the powers of the presidency to punish dissent, to conduct searches without probable cause, to collect information and keep files on innocent citizens, and to expand government intrusion and control into virtually every aspect of life. What did Pelosi do to stop him?
She voted for the Patriot Act in 2001. As speaker, she has done nothing to constrain the Secret Service and its egregious infringements such as relegating protesters to “free speech zones” away from the president’s earshot. Most recently, she led the House in capitulating on the FISA surveillance law, protecting Bush by granting immunity to telecom companies that spied on citizens at his behest.
Lawsuits alleging telecom companies violated the law by conducting domestic spying without permission of the FISA court would have revealed the scope of the government’s surveillance program, which citizens are entitled to know. A lawsuit also would have forced courts to settle the question of whether the spying was legal. Granting immunity to the telecom companies — and, by extension, to Bush — represents another victory for the president enabled by the failure of Pelosi & Co.
To appreciate what an utter failure it is, try to imagine an earlier Congress protecting Richard Nixon from lawsuits that threatened exposure of his misdeeds.
Finally, consider this: It took George W. Bush six years to forfeit the approval of most Americans. Pelosi led Congress to single-digit approval ratings in only 17 months. Her declaration that Bush is a “total failure” is like a parent complaining that her child is out of control while doing nothing to rein him in. If Bush is indeed a total failure, it is because Congress allows him to be.
