The Bush Administration VS. A Democratic Congress

I am truly amazed at President Bush's absurd game of demanding that Congress submit to his will, as if he really believes this is a monarchy and that the job of Congress is to grant his wishes. Ha!

Perhaps if Bush had employed real constitutional scholars in his administration instead of 150 religious ideologues from Pat Robertson's Regent University he would understand how this thing we call a "Democracy" [not Theocracy] really works.

However I am truly concerned that the President seems to be unaware of the fact there are three branches of government and that he does not exercise absolute authority over the Legislative Branch.

The President "demands" a bill with no strings [i.e. deadlines, timetables] attached.

This means that the President wants unlimited amounts of money to wage a war for an undetermined amount of time, yet he can't even explain to us what constitutes as a victory or how he plans to achieve it.

Congress recently passed a bill that would have allotted President Bush the money necessary to wage his war in Iraq, if troops were to begin withdrawing from Iraq in 2008.

The President and his enablers have wrongfully labeled this move as "political theatre" and have falsely claimed that Congressional Democrats are trying to harm the troops by putting guidelines in the bill.

The Bush Administration has also been proclaiming the date of April 15 as being the day that "the money runs out" but an independent report concludes the Pentagon has enough money to continue operations of the war threw July without significant impact.

What else the President, his loyalist and his enablers are failing to mention is that the President is the one who failed or refused to include necessary money for the war in his annual budget. Because, you know, it's pretty hard to balance the budget with a trillion dollar war on the books.

Now President Bush seems to be holding press conferences for the sheer purpose of having nationally televised temper tantrums.

The President has reduced himself to throwing out partisan slurs to the audience so everyone can see just how outraged [!] he is that Congress is no longer acting as his complicit puppet.

The President's recent behavior is reminiscent to a spoiled child who is used to getting his own way and who doesn't know how to play well with the other kids.

Unfortunately for Bush he does not realize this behavior is extremely unbecoming of a mature President and that history will duly note his stubborn foolhardiness as detrimental to his own cause.

The President's recent behavior indicates he had grown far too comfortable with the old Republican Congress and the age of unaccountability they had enabled him to reign over.

So, where is that bi-partisanship spirit that Bush promised shortly after the Republicans lost the elections?

Oh, that's right, by "bipartisan" what the President really meant was that if the Democratic Congress was as subservient as the Republican Congress then bipartisanship was absolutely possible in one of the most partisan countries in the world! It's all so clear now!

Back to reality ...

Now the President wants to meet with Democrats to discuss the issue, with preconditions of course.

What a surprise! This is the exact same reason the Bush Administrations foreign policy is floundering at an impasse, because of it's unrealistic and unfair preconditions.

The Bush Administration attitude is "I'll only talk to you if you agree to compromise your position beforehand and I will not compromise my position at all."

No wonder they can't get anywhere. The Bush Administration cannot even negotiate with it's opponents in the US, so how would it ever be able to negotiate with opponents outside the US? The answer is they can't and that's part of the reason why the Bush Administration is broken down on so many levels.

The President and Republicans have to realize that they have already been given every opportunity and chance to win or end the war in Iraq while they were in power, but they failed to do either.

Their failure led to their defeat in the 2006 elections, but the Republicans don't even have the dignity to loose with grace and refuse to quietly surrender their position of authority even though they are no longer the majority.

That failure and fall from grace should serve as a lesson to anyone, Democrats included, who wants to wage a war, you need to have a plan for ending the war just as you had a plan for beginning the war and you must set a goal that is realistic and obtainable.

It's time for Republicans to give the other team it's chance at bat because they lost the inning. Whether they like it or not, it's the rules of the game and if they don't follow them history will not forgive them as easily as their enablers have.