WP: Why Bush Has Trouble Just Saying No

[brooklynite]

President Bush summoned reporters to the front of Air Force One last week to issue his 134th veto threat, warning Congress not to try to block the transfer of the management of six U.S. ports to an Arab-owned firm. But it's a good bet that his threat won't result in an actual veto. The first 133 didn't.

Bush is the first president to complete an entire term without exercising his veto power since John Quincy Adams, which seems counterintuitive. Bush is an Action Man; he believes the essence of political leadership is strong and decisive action that creates its own political reality. Bush is also an ardent believer in executive power; he takes an expansive view of his prerogatives as commander in chief and continues to push for more, including the line-item veto. So why hasn't he used the veto he already has?

The answers have their roots in Republican control of Congress, Bush's singular notions of power and the calculation by GOP congressional leaders that their fortunes would rise and fall with the president's. The result has been a classic Beltway Kabuki game, where veto threats don't really mean veto threats, although they don't mean nothing, either.

...snip...

Bush likes to project an image of strength bordering on omnipotence, where every initiative is a presidential initiative, everyone marches to the presidential beat, and everything happens according to the presidential plan -- even when he's clearly changing that plan, as when he co-opted the Democratic proposal to create a Department of Homeland Security or when he incorporated a popular Democratic idea to send $300 to every American into his own tax-cut plan. A veto does not square with this aura of all-powerful, agenda-setting leadership. It's a defensive, reactive measure, used to block someone else's initiative, suggesting a lack of discipline within the Republican ranks.

So when the Bush administration has floated veto threats, on issues ranging from stem cells to the Patriot Act, they've usually been signals to GOP leaders about priorities. For example, the White House statement about last year's highway bill warned that if it exceeded $284 billion, "the president's senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill," but if it included a provision weakening sanctions against Cuba, "the President would veto the bill." The final bill was several billion dollars above the president's marker, but the Cuba provision was stripped. Bush signed it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/24/AR2006022402313.html

[unblock]

1. the dynamic of actual vetos plays a back seat to the actual veto power

especially when the same party controls the executive and both houses of congress.

the threat of veto normally inhibits proposal or passage of likely-vetoed legislation; similarly, the threat of a veto-override inhibits an actual veto. actual vetos and overrides are more indicative of a failure of negotiation and/or political posturing. this is rather less likely when one party controls all the key players, and is especially unlikely when that party is as concerned about image as this one.

banana republicans are notorious for making decisions in secrecy and then railroading a "consensus" through, possibly with one or two democrats to create the "bipartisan" facade. with this p.r. approach, actual vetos most improbable.