Bush's Way or the Highway

[marmar]

Bush's Way or the Highway
By Robert Parry
September 18, 2006


George W. Bush’s Sept. 15 outburst – threatening to stop interrogating terror suspects if Congress doesn’t let him revise the Geneva Conventions to permit coercive techniques – is part of a pattern of petulance that dates back to even before the 9/11 attacks but has resurfaced as Bush faces new challenges to his authority.

In summer 2001, less than six months into his presidency while confronting congressional obstacles to his domestic program, Bush told followers that he was ready to “go back to Crawford” if he didn’t get his way on legislation.

That threat came after Sen. Jim Jeffords, a Vermont Republican, joined with the Democrats to give them narrow control of the Senate in mid-2001. Bush also was facing defeat on a patients’ bill of rights.

In a meeting with congressional allies, “Bush appeared to draw a line in the sand when he indicated he always could return to Crawford, Texas, if the liberal health juggernaut grinds him down,” wrote right-wing columnist Robert D. Novak.

Besides the patients’ bill of rights, Bush found himself battling congressional momentum in favor of new campaign-finance restrictions.

In the context of Bush fighting those two popular bills, Los Angeles Times political writer Ronald Brownstein also picked up word of Bush issuing a “back to Crawford” threat, this one recounted by a GOP lobbyist close to the administration.

Bush “continues to send a signal that, ‘I’m going to do what I want to do, and if nobody likes it, I’m going to go back to Crawford’,” Brownstein wrote, quoting the lobbyist.

The complete column is at: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/091806.html