As President Bush employs a full-court press to legalize torture, Matt reminds us how rare it has been for Bush to get into a public confrontation with Congress:

It’s extremely rare for the Bush administration to pick big fights with congress. When the House and Senate were preparing to send him a campaign finance reform bill he regarded as unconstitutional, he tried to get his allies to kill it. But when they couldn’t, he signed it. When it looked like congress might pass a patients’ bill of rights he tried — and succeeded — in getting House allies to kill it, but indicate that he would sign it if it passed. He hasn’t vetoed any bills. He comes from an ideological tradition nominally committed to small government, but has been willing to increase spending by leaps and bounds.

When it comes to this issue, though, no compromise can be brooked. Bush wants to order intelligence agencies to violate all the country’s traditions and several of its laws in order that they might torture people. To that end, he’s willing to say that if he can’t torture people he just won’t interrogate them at all.

Matt seems to have forgotten that Bush issued his first veto this summer over the stem cell bill. But his broader points is right: It’s very rare for Bush to make a stand on principle. For the most part, he’s worked quietly behind the scenes to get the changes he wanted, and then signed whatever Congress sent to his desk.

But the exceptions are interesting. In the stem cell debate, he fought tooth and nail to prevent Congress from second-guessing his “compromise” positon on stem cells, despite the fact that the position didn’t make much sense to either the left or the right. Here, he’s fighting tooth and nail to prevent Congress from second-guessing his decision to torture suspected terrorists. The only principle that seems to be operating in both cases is the principle of unbridled executive power. He appears to believe that when he makes a decision, Congress has a duty to defer to his judgment. Fortunately, that’s not the way our Constitution works.

Update: Someone falsely claiming to be Solveig Singleton commented on this post over the weekend. Given that this person lied about his identity, I can only assume that the substance of the comment is false as well. It has been deleted.


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