If we want to debate the need for and efficacy of broader wiretapping capacity, by all means, criticize away. At a certain point it becomes nearly impossible to place faith in the administration. They need to make a case beyond mere platitudes. Yes, we get it, you want to protect the Homeland. Now please show us concrete evidence of how this will help you do so, of where our wiretapping is lacking, and of how you will use the intelligence to make us safer. Also, let's see the safeguards against excess. So on the merits, criticize. But also at least be thankful that the President, perhaps chastened, perhaps merely cynical, has chosen to utilize Congress this time around. Whether he is trying to shore up support among GOP members of the House and Senate, or if instead he sees the writing on the wall that indicates that he might be in for a long couple of years in his dealings with Capital Hill, it is hard to imagine the President Bush of 2005 being this up-front in his desire to get Congress to support programs that heretofore he seems to have believed to have been the domain of the executive.
But what also rings clear is that the President has already entered lame duck status. He appears to be almost a nonentity in terms of the way in which Congress goes about its business. Republicans as much as Democrats seem content either to criticize, or perhaps more ominously for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, to ignore or dismiss president Bush. The next two years might represent the political equivalent of trench warfare in which a scorned and irrelevant president faces off against an opponent deeply dug-in and unmovable. Whether it will lead to a reluctant bipartisanship of necessity or gridlock, we cannot know. We can hope for the former, but we may want to prepare for the latter.
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