Presidency by fiat strikes once again

4/6/07
In the end, it doesn't matter much. One more example of the Bush administration flouting Congress and conventional decency doesn't really come as a shock anymore.
Still, the "recess" appointment this week of Republican fundraiser Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium is irksome. Before he withdrew his nomination, he was certain to be voted down by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where Democrats had excoriated him for his contributions to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential race. That group had introduced wholly unsubstantiated notions that Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry had fabricated the incidents that led to his commendations in the war in Vietnam.
Kerry and Connecticut's Christopher J. Dodd worked to make sure Fox's bad deeds wouldn't earn him any plaudits, at least not in the diplomatic arena.
But the Bush administration, as is its wont, circumvented the process. The idea of a recess appointment is to allow presidential nominees to take office even while Congress is not in session, thereby allowing key positions to remain filled. But the Senate is out for only one week, and this is hardly a vital job ( U.S.-Belgian relations are, at last check, pretty solid). This is a move whose only possible justification is spite.
It's of a piece with the entire presidency. The administration acts as if it is the government, not just one co-equal branch of it. We're not talking about indefinite detention or illegal wiretapping, but it's all the same pattern.