10.10.2005
Bush's Fraying Presidency (WashingtonPost.com)
By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 9, 2005; Page B07
Three front-page stories on a single day last week testified to the unraveling of the Bush presidency.
The lead story in The Post on Thursday reported that "the Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere," with 46 Republicans joining the Democrats to pass restrictions on prisoner abuse so unacceptable to President Bush that he has threatened his first veto.
A second story on the same page recounted that "the conservative uprising against President Bush escalated yesterday as Republican activists angry over his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court confronted the president's envoys during a pair of tense closed-door meetings."
Participants described it as the biggest split with the GOP base in his five years in office.
And elsewhere on the page was the news that the Central Intelligence Agency's director had rejected a recommendation from its inspector general that he convene a formal "accountability board" to judge the possible culpability of senior officials in the failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The action triggered a statement of concern from the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee and criticism from families of Sept. 11 victims.
These developments came against a background of rising conservative criticism in Congress of runaway spending, of continuing investigations of the administration's faltering response to Hurricane Katrina and of criminal indictments and grand jury probes that have forced out the chief White House procurement officer and the House Republican majority leader and that may implicate other top officials of both branches.
(More ... Bush's Fraying Presidency) ¶ 21:58
Sunday, October 9, 2005; Page B07
Three front-page stories on a single day last week testified to the unraveling of the Bush presidency.
The lead story in The Post on Thursday reported that "the Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere," with 46 Republicans joining the Democrats to pass restrictions on prisoner abuse so unacceptable to President Bush that he has threatened his first veto.
A second story on the same page recounted that "the conservative uprising against President Bush escalated yesterday as Republican activists angry over his nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court confronted the president's envoys during a pair of tense closed-door meetings."
Participants described it as the biggest split with the GOP base in his five years in office.
And elsewhere on the page was the news that the Central Intelligence Agency's director had rejected a recommendation from its inspector general that he convene a formal "accountability board" to judge the possible culpability of senior officials in the failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The action triggered a statement of concern from the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee and criticism from families of Sept. 11 victims.
These developments came against a background of rising conservative criticism in Congress of runaway spending, of continuing investigations of the administration's faltering response to Hurricane Katrina and of criminal indictments and grand jury probes that have forced out the chief White House procurement officer and the House Republican majority leader and that may implicate other top officials of both branches.
(More ... Bush's Fraying Presidency) ¶ 21:58
