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The New York Times
Opinion
My Way or the Highway
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com on the Web. March 30, 2008
President Bush likes to talk about
not being swayed by public opinion, especially the views of Democrats. At
a news conference last December, he said the most important criterion for
picking a president is “whether or not somebody’s got a sound set of principles
from which they will not deviate as they make decisions.”
Unhappily for the country, we have learned that Mr. Bush has no idea when
standing on principle becomes blind stubbornness and then destructive obsession.
So it goes with his choice to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal
Counsel, Steven Bradbury.
In a lower job in that office, Mr. Bradbury signed off on two secret legal memos
authorizing torture in American detention camps. The first approved
waterboarding, among other things. When Congress outlawed waterboarding,
the other memo assured Mr. Bush that he could ignore the law.
Mr. Bradbury is widely viewed on both sides of the aisle as such a toxic choice
that he will never be confirmed. The Senate has already refused to do so
twice. Still, Mr. Bush clings to this lost cause, snarling the
confirmation process for hundreds of nominees and crippling parts of the federal
regulatory apparatus.
The head of the Office of Legal Counsel is one of the most important jobs in the
Justice Department, charged with telling the executive branch whether it is
acting legally. His advice is supposed to be based on the law, not the
party line.
Mr. Bradbury, however, continues to defend his cynical memos, and the odious
practices they blessed. In a Senate hearing, he tried to justify the way
the Central Intelligence Agency does waterboarding by comparing it with the
Japanese military’s World War II practice of forcing prisoners to drink huge
amounts of water and then jumping on their stomachs.
Human rights experts say the Bush and Bradbury-approved method of waterboarding
— strapping down a prisoner under gushing water to make him fear drowning — puts
the United States in the company of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the French in
Algeria and the security services of the Burmese dictatorship. There is
certainly no comfort in that.
When Mr. Bush refused to withdraw the Bradbury nomination, the Senate’s
Democratic leaders decided to stop processing other controversial nominations.
Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, twice offered to resume confirmations
and compromise on candidates if Mr. Bush withdrew Mr. Bradbury — and forwarded
the names of six Democrats chosen for bipartisan panels like the Federal
Election Commission. The White House refused, and Mr. Reid took to keeping
the Senate in pro forma sessions during vacations to prevent Mr. Bush
from making a recess appointment of Mr. Bradbury and other objectionable
choices.
At this point, according to a review by
Politico.com, the election
commission, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Mine Safety and Health
Review Commission, the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board and the
National Labor Relations Board do not have enough members to do their jobs.
Scores of federal judgeships are vacant. The Council of Economic Advisers
is down to one adviser.
This is bad for the country. Mr. Bush should withdraw Mr. Bradbury’s
nomination, replace him at the Justice Department with someone committed to
upholding the law and take Mr. Reid’s offer. The president’s
hyperpartisanship and my-way-or-the-highway arrogance is now close to paralyzing
his own administration.
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