President Bush used Congress’s Easter break today to defy Democratic lawmakers and appoint three officials who have already drawn heavy criticism on Capitol Hill.When it was announced that the White House was withdrawing Mr. Fox's name last week, I had a sneaking suspicion that something was up; the White House never caves this easily without having something up their sleeve. So it's no surprise that he did it. What did you expect?
The president used recess appointments to install Sam Fox, a major Republican donor from Missouri, to be ambassador to Belgium; Andrew G. Biggs of New York to be deputy commissioner of Social Security, and Susan E. Dudley of Virginia to be administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the office of Management and Budget.
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Mr. Fox, a wealthy businessman active in Republican politics, contributed $50,000 to the Swift Boat campaign that attacked Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam War record during the 2004 presidential race. Senator Kerry got a measure of revenge last month as he needled Mr. Fox in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Bush administration withdrew Mr. Fox’s nomination for the ambassadorship on March 28, after it became clear that Democratic senators were lining up against him to settle a score. Mr. Kerry commented then that Mr. Fox “had every opportunity to disavow the politics of personal destruction and to embrace the truth” and had not done so. “The White House made the right decision to withdraw the nomination,” Mr. Kerry said. “I hope this signals a new day in political discourse.”
Mr. Kerry had a different reaction today. “It’s sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate,” he said in a statement.
Of course the Orcosphere will chime in that Bill Clinton made 140 recess appointments, most notably that of James Hormel to be the ambassador to Luxembourg. Mr. Hormel is openly gay and the Senate at the time was run by the Republicans, who went into full-tilt swooning and pearl-clutching over the idea that a gay man would be representing America to the Luxembourgers. He also used a recess appointment to put Bill Lan Lee in as Assistant Attorney General for civil rights because it was believed that Mr. Lee's strong support for affirmative action would face opposition by the Republican Senate.
It will be interesting to see how the right wing will compare the appointment of a political hack -- Mr. Fox -- to the appointment of Mr. Hormel, who at the least had worked with the United Nations, but I'm sure they'll come up some tortured logic to justify the comparison, and once again they'll be using their nemesis, Mr. Clinton, to justify their actions. It's amazing how often the Bushies fall back on "Clinton did it, too!"
The difference, of course, is that Mr. Clinton was more justified in making these appointments because the arguments against Mr. Hormel and Mr. Lee were couched in right-wing cant against gays and equal opportunity whereas Mr. Fox's most notable achievement to date has been giving money to a political goon squad. The other difference is more in style, really. Mr. Clinton drove the righties crazy because he was without question one of the most deft politicians to occupy the presidency in the 20th Century; certainly on a par with FDR, who also managed to tweak his opponents with a grin and a deferential shrug while they went ballistic. Even his responses -- the grin, the laugh -- drove the Republicans into apoplectic fits of spittle-flecked rage, and the more they did it, the more he enjoyed it. Mr. Bush, however, has never mastered the deft touch. In fact, he reminds me more of the ballet-dancing hippos in Fantasia; a fascinating spectacle that you watch with awe and amazement only because of the sheer magnificence of the ineptitude being demonstrated.
That's the one thing that drives the Bushies crazy; no matter how hard they try, they will never be as good as Mr. Clinton in that regard, and the harder they try, the worse it gets -- and the more fun it is to watch.
