Veto! (The Presidential "Fuck You")

Today President Bush issued the first veto of his presidency, that fascinating Constitutional power that allows one person to override the stated will of 66% of the country's representatives in Congress. I am a total political junkie (as you may have noticed on the sidebar links), and the veto is one of the most intriguing powers given to the US President. Interestingly, the word "veto" does not actually appear in the US Constitution, though its powers are defined in Article 1, Section 7.

President Bush's veto of a bill that would have expanded federal funding for stem cell research is notable on several fronts. First, until this veto, it appeared that Bush was on his way to becoming only the second president in US history to complete two terms in office without issuing a single veto (Thomas Jefferson is the only one to hold this distinction). As it was, President Bush was the first president since Martin Van Buren in the 1830's to go an entire term of office without a single veto. In comparison, President Clinton vetoed 37 times during his presidency. And even he was very restrained compared to presidents like Grover Cleveland (584 vetoes) and Franklin Roosevelt (635 vetoes).

But President Bush's veto today is interesting for its political ramifications as well.

Click below to read more insightful analysis and to see some pictures of Bushes that are much more attractive than the one in the White House...

President Bush's decision to veto the stem cell research bill is a classic illustration of what is both his greatest potential for success but, when left unchecked, has proven to be one of his greatest potentials for failure. That is, when this president comes to a conclusion on a particular matter and is convinced of its "rightness", he simply does not move from that position no matter what the political (or other) costs to himself or others. In an ideal world, this is something that we would admire in a politician, for all of us have been irritated at times by politicians who have held more positions than Steamworks on a Saturday night. But President Bush's potential for failure is that sometimes (and I know many of my friends would say "often") the conclusion he arrives at is not the correct one, so he ends up holding tenaciously and unyieldingly to a bad position.

Thus, today he found himself in the position where, because of this character trait of his, he used one of the strongest powers of the presidency to oppose a bill that was supported by some of his most faithful "pro-life" supporters, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and ultra-conservative Utah Senator Orrin Hatch (who, if I recall correctly, was one of the co-chairs of President Bush's inaugural committee).

Admittedly, it is a very difficult ethical situation, and the strange bedfellows who put the bill together only highlights that fact, but it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the days to come. I will say that President Bush's announcement about the veto was handled with more political adeptness than we have seen from this White House generally, with the president being surrounded by children who were born after being "adopted" as unused frozen embryos, the very ones that would be destroyed if the bill had become law. Personally, I think this is one of those cases where the moral lines involved are so difficult to define that, so long as someone has given the issue thoughtful consideration, I would not be extremely critical regardless of which side he or she comes down on.

Well, speaking of wanting to go down on something, and since we have been thinking about Bushes a lot in this post, here's some bushes that I think you will enjoy looking at!