Yesterday President Bush vetoed the Iraq Appropriations bill that the Democratic Congress had worked out--it would have financed the war and set a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces from the Iraq theatre.
What's he playing at? I've been wondering this for weeks as he's gone from place to place and said at various and sundry venues that he won't sign any legislation that interferes with his ability to prosecute the war. Does he seriously think that if the Democrats could muster the votes for this bill, that they can't simply reintroduce the same legislation and send it to him again? Eventually, he's either going to have to sign a bill with a timetable, or his Iraq boondoggle will run out of money and he'll have to bring the troops home anyway.
So I've pondered this. What's Bush's endgame?
Signing statements. The President's "inherent powers as Commander-in-Chief as executor of the unitary executive branch," which is how he describes himself in his signing statements on the legislation Congress has sent him to sign the past six years. If Bush doesn't like the withdrawal provisions, he'll simply use a signing statement to say he believes the timetable to be "purely advisory" (words he has used) and not consistent with his "inherent powers as Commander-in-Chief" yadda yadda yadda. Why couldn't he have simply done that yesterday? It's his modus operandi, after all.
I realized. He can't do that yet.
See, if he signed the bill now, signing statement and all, it would look like he'd caved to the Congress, after spending weeks saying how terrible the bill was. He'd lose political capital (which I'm not sure he ever actually had, but we'll leave that for another time), and even though he had no intention to actually follow through on the provisions (as Condi Rice so eloquently said, the President would simply defy Congress on this point) he'd have the perception that he'd agreed to do something he wasn't going to do (and let's be honest, no one outside the liberal blogosphere is going to look at his signing statement; most people don't even know about signing statements).
If he waits, closer to June or July when the funds dry up he avoids all that. He clams up about how Congress can't tell him what to do on the war. He comes out looking like a compromiser for signing their bill. (And based on past experience, he'll probably outright lie and praise the bill for doing things it doesn't actually do.) Chances are the timetables would be pushed back a month or three due to Congress having to send it back again and again. If the timetables get into election season he'd be counting on the reluctance of the Democrats to push the issue of the troop withdrawal and his defiance of the legislation's timetable during the election season. And if it were taken to the courts it's likely the courts would punt on this as it's a "political question" or a "separation of powers" question, much as the War Powers Act has never really been litigated.
In other words, vetoing the bill now (and maybe the next two or three) lets Bush run out the clock and look like a compromiser.
Or, he could just be a petulant bastard who hasn't thought things through to this degree, and his veto is a hissy-fit because Congress isn't letting him indulge his inner dictator.