Thread: Mark Shields: Neither Feared Nor Loved (Chambliss, Isakson)

Neither Feared Nor Loved
An elected executive — whether a mayor dealing with a city council, a governor facing a state legislature or the U.S. president wrestling with Congress

— in order to win a legislative majority, depends on two perishable political resources: love and, more importantly, fear.

Legislators will sometimes cast a vote because of their feelings of affection, gratitude or loyalty toward the mayor, governor or president. But fear — of the executive's wrath or retaliation — is an even more effective vote-getter.

After the centerpiece of the administration's domestic agenda was killed — by Republican votes — in the U.S. Senate this week, this harsh political post-mortem was delivered: With a little over 17 months remaining in his White House term, President George W. Bush on Capitol Hill is neither feared nor loved.

It was just two weeks ago that Bush, for only the second time in five years, made the trip to the Capitol to have lunch with Republican senators. He came for one purpose: to convince those GOP lawmakers that, together, "We've got to convince the American people that this bill [the negotiated immigration compromise before the Senate] is the best way to enforce our border. . . . The status quo is unacceptable." On what was almost surely the last major immigration vote of George W. Bush's administration, just 12 Republican senators voted with their president.

Now, after the president's poll numbers have crashed into nether regions not seen since Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, it is important to remember how high George W. Bush was still flying politically in January of 2005. Back then he was fresh from leading his party to a third successive national political victory, having become in November of 2004 the first U.S. president in 16 years to win a majority of the popular vote.

That was when Bush, with the counsel of his much-praised sage, Karl Rove, made the fateful decision to push, as his most urgent legislative initiative, the semi-privatization of Social Security.
It was doomed from the outset and never even came to a vote in either branch of Congress, both then controlled by a victorious GOP.

If instead Bush had pushed in 2005 for the overhaul of the immigration law to deal with the 12 million immigrants in the country illegally, it is a reasonable bet that, relying upon his then-still-substantial supplies of love and fear in Congress, he could have won an historic, bipartisan legislative victory. He would have a legacy beyond Supreme Court Justices Roberts and Alito (hardly insignificant) and the disaster that is Iraq.

The lack of fear — make that open contempt — for the politically disabled president was obvious earlier in the week when House Republicans, in caucus, and by the lopsided margin of 114-23, expressed a vote of no-confidence in the immigration compromise endorsed by the president, then before the Senate.

That immigration compromise, the work of months of confidential negotiations, had been publicly unveiled on May 17 by the 10 senators — seven Republican and three Democrats — and two Bush Cabinet secretaries who had fashioned it. Among them were Georgia's two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, both of whom have regularly beseeched Bush to come to Georgia to raise them money and votes.

After Chambliss was booed at the Georgia state Republican convention for standing with President Bush on the immigration compromise, he folded like a two-dollar accordion. When the final Senate vote on the issue came Thursday, eight of the 10 U.S. senators took the heat and voted to continue the debate on the bill they had helped write. But not the Georgia peaches — Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, two guys you really don't want to share a foxhole with.

George W. Bush faces a bleak future in the twilight of his presidency, knowing he was unable to inspire neither love nor fear, nor loyalty, among members of his party in Congress.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

COPYRIGHT 2007 MARK SHIELDS

http://www.creators.com/opinion/mark-sh ... loved.html

So, this Mark Shields boosh shill has contempt for MY senators because *gasp* they dared to listen to their constituents instead of jorge?

What a joke!

That immigration compromise, the work of months of confidential negotiations, had been publicly unveiled on May 17 by the 10 senators — seven Republican and three Democrats — and two Bush Cabinet secretaries who had fashioned it. Among them were Georgia's two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, both of whom have regularly beseeched Bush to come to Georgia to raise them money and votes.

After Chambliss was booed at the Georgia state Republican convention for standing with President Bush on the immigration compromise, he folded like a two-dollar accordion. When the final Senate vote on the issue came Thursday, eight of the 10 U.S. senators took the heat and voted to continue the debate on the bill they had helped write. But not the Georgia peaches — Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, two guys you really don't want to share a foxhole with.

I read it differently. I thought it was more about Chambliss and Isakson blowing in the wind. They first went on record as supporting the legislation. We must assume that they acted in good faith and voted for the bill because they thought it was a good bill and good for the country. However, after hearing the hue and cry and determining that their own political careers might be in jeopardy they quickly changed their vote. Viewing it in the light most favorable to the senators, we have to assign some extremely bad judgement to them for supporting it in the first place. At worst, they were playing politics and casting their votes in the way that was most politically expedient for them. I haven't heard anything from either one of them that justifies their actions.

Originally Posted by American

So, this Mark Shields boosh shill has contempt for MY senators because *gasp* they dared to listen to their constituents instead of jorge?

What a joke!

Shields isn't a Bush shill, he's a long time leftist who hates Republicans.

He, like 99% of the rest of the media, wanted amnesty to pass. And again, like 99% of the media, he is overjoyed to watch Bush's bungling and complete incompetence sink the Republican party.

All I know is that they got a lot of pressure from Georgians. They listened. We are glad and we are going to re-elect both of them!!

THANK YOU SENATOR CHAMBLISS AND SENATOR ISAKSON!!

WE'RE GOING TO RE-ELECT YOU GUYS AND WE HOPE THAT YOU HAVE A VERY, VERY HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY !!

CHAMBLISS 08 !

(Isakson isn't until 2010)