Are vetoes the key to a Bush recovery?

Tom Curry National affairs writer • Profile • E-mail

WASHINGTON - Usually a fan of mountain biking, President Bush will soon get exercise of a less aerobic but more potent sort: using his pen to veto legislation.

Bush seems to relish the opportunity to veto the Iraq war funding bill that Congress will send him in the next few weeks. He contends that it imposes impermissible limits on his commander-in-chief powers and adds billions in unrelated spending to his request.

On Tuesday he urged Democratic leaders to “send me this unacceptable bill as quickly as possible…. I'll veto it, and then Congress can get down to the business of funding our troops without strings and without delay.”

In his first six years in the White House, Bush vetoed only one bill, a measure to allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

But like his predecessor Bill Clinton, Bush now faces a Congress in control of his adversaries. Clinton used his veto battles with Congress to recover his footing after the Republicans got control in 1994.

A defining moment of Clinton’s presidency was Oct. 19, 1995 when he threw down the gauntlet to House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. “I will not let you destroy Medicare and I will veto this bill,” Clinton said referring to GOP legislation curbing the future growth of Medicare spending.

The standoff between Republican leaders and Clinton led to the government shutdown at the end of 1995. Clinton won the perception battle on Medicare and it helped him win a second term.

'Demonizing' Republicans in 1995
“You guys took extraordinary advantage, very correctly so, of demonizing us,” Dole’s advisor Sheila Burke told Clinton strategist George Stephanopoulos during a 1996 campaign post-mortem at Harvard University. “We essentially lost the public relations war early in December (1995).”

“Clinton’s skillful and aggressive use of the veto was a hallmark of his domestic presidency after the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994,” said Princeton University political scientist Charles Cameron, author of Veto Bargaining: Presidents and the Politics of Negative Power. “In some respects, he was more successful opposing Congress than he had been leading it, when the Democrats controlled the institution.”

But vetoing lots of bills doesn’t necessarily make a president popular. President Harry Truman issued 250 vetoes, including “pocket vetoes” of legislation after Congress had adjourned. In his final year in the White House, Truman’s approval rating as measured by the Gallup Poll was only 22 percent, 12 points lower than Bush’s current rating.

Whatever the polling might say, the numbers that truly matter are 290, the number of votes needed to override a veto in the House, and 67, the number needed in the Senate.

Some Democratic leaders forecast Bush winning the Iraq veto fight. “I don’t think that we will see a majority of the Senate vote to cut off funding at this stage,” said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Sunday. “Nobody wants to play chicken with our troops on the ground,” he said.

Interactive Analyzing the 2008 presidential field

Did Obama 'surrender' to Bush?
Obama’s assessment drew scorn from Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of the Daily Kos web site. “Instead of threatening Bush with even more restrictions and daring him to veto funding for the troops out of pique, Barack just surrendered to him,” Moulitsas wrote.

Bush’s veto threat may pay some dividends in that he’s splitting the Democratic ranks. While Obama sounds resigned to Bush winning on the veto, his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton said Tuesday, “This is vetoing the will of the American people.” She added that “I’m not ready to concede” that Bush will ultimately make his veto stick.

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