Behind the filibuster controversy

This New York Times article mentions in passing two key background issues in the filibuster fight.

So far, administration and Congressional aides said, the White House has avoided any strong-arm lobbying of Republican senators to end the use of filibusters to block nominees to federal judgeships.

The aides said any heavy-handed pressure from the White House could backfire by making the issue seem less about fairness than about the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches, a topic on which senators of any political stripe might be loath to side with the administration.

But of course, the filibuster is all about the balance of power between the President and Congress. Because the President and the Senate majority are from the same party (as is the House), the President would like to nominate whoever he likes with as little back talk as possible from Congress. Bush has fought hard for a model of Presidential leadership, in which the White House controls the legislative agenda and his lieutenants in the House and Senate twist arms to push it through. That is what happened to a very large degree with his tax cuts, the Medicare bill, and Social Security. It is also one of the reasons why Bush was happy to replace Trent Lott as Majority Leader with Bill Frist, who was far more indebted to him.

The second issue is connected to the first:

At the same time, the White House is publicly turning up the pressure on Democrats, accusing them of being obstructionist on judicial nominations and portraying that position as part of a broader problem that Democrats have used to keep Mr. Bush from addressing issues like Social Security and high oil prices.

In doing so, the White House is also pressing Democrats not to use the bitterness of the filibuster fight as a reason to slow the Senate to a crawl and cut off any remaining hope of bipartisan agreement on the rest of Mr. Bush's agenda. "The president is concerned that you've had leaders from the Democratic Party in the Senate who have been more intent on blocking progress than they have been on coming to the table and working with us to solve the important priorities that we face," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said. "Let's remember that this matter is being discussed right now because Senate Democrats have gone to an unprecedented level of blocking the president's nominees to the bench from simply receiving an up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

It will not be enough for Bush to win the filibuster issue on judges. He must also make sure that the Democrats do not dare muck up the legislative agenda over the next one and a half years leading up to the 2006 elections. Bush well knows that after these elections, his influence will decline markedly (unless, of course, he can make a credible threat that his brother will replace him as the Republican nominee). So Bush is playing a dangerous game: If he gets his seven circuit court judges and his Supreme Court appointments, he may not get anything else of importance accomplished, including Social Security and tax reform.

Bush may be counting on the fact that he can successfully brand the Democrats as obstructionist if they delay Senate business in retaliation and start refusing to give universal consent to ordinary Senate procedures. He can use this to try to increase Republican margins in the House and Senate (or defend them from decline) in the 2006 elections. To be sure, he takes a significant risk in doing this. On the other hand, Bush is by nature a risk taker, and he may believe that by pressing for the nuclear option, he can not only win the fight over filibusters, but also make the Democrats capitulate, with the result that the Republicans will face a relatively toothless opponent in the years to come. This suggests that the struggle ahead is not simply about seven appellate judges. It is a battle for all the marbles.