Washington watch

The shake-up of Bush's national security team makes Cheney look isolated—but don't count him out yet. Plus the Republicans prepare for congressional war
February 25, 2007
Cheney versus the realists

The big question over President Bush's shake-up of the national security team is the impact on the hitherto all-powerful Dick Cheney. He has lost Donald Rumsfeld, his old friend and ally at the Pentagon, and the new defence secretary, Robert Gates, is a pragmatic career bureaucrat from the CIA. Gates is much closer to the realists around Bush senior like Jim Baker than to the zealots preferred by Bush junior; he was one of the first people Baker called to join his Iraq Study Group. The new director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, who used to run the vast electronic intelligence operation of the National Security Agency, was strongly backed for the post by Cheney's old enemy, Colin Powell. So with former general Mike Hayden now running the CIA, the top intelligence and security jobs are all in the hands of career military or CIA veterans, loyal chain-of-command types with limited appreciation for the way Cheney's national security aides have been sidestepping the usual channels. And Condoleezza Rice has been strengthened by the nomination of former intelligence czar John Negroponte (a career diplomat) to fill the long-gaping hole as her deputy. As a result, Cheney looks isolated. But don't count him out yet. When Bush was going wobbly after the Republicans lost control of congress and Jim Baker's report on Iraq was becoming the conventional wisdom, it was Cheney who persuaded Bush to go for the anti-Baker "surge" plan of sending three more army brigades and two marine battalions to Iraq.


Granny Pelosi

After trying to pillory Nancy Pelosi as a wild-eyed feminist and dangerous California liberal during the election campaign, the Republicans were rubbing their eyes in disbelief when she took the gavel as the new speaker of the house in the role of a devout Catholic granny from working-class Baltimore. Preceded by five of her grandchildren, with one more as a babe in her arms, Pelosi spoke of her 43-year marriage and her five children, who gave her the confidence "to go from the kitchen to the congress." She even had a kind word for her Republican predecessor as speaker, Dennis Hastert, who ran campaign ads that asked, "Do we really want Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco values leading the culture war?" Pelosi also stole a theme from Margaret Thatcher, citing the "Where there is darkness, may we bring light" prayer from St Francis of Assisi (who happens to be the patron saint of Pelosi's constituency in San Francisco) that the iron lady used to launch her occupation of 10 Downing Street.

The White House declared war on the new Democratic majority three days before Christmas, when the justice department rejected incoming Senate judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy's requests for the memo signed by Bush authorising the CIA to create secret prisons abroad, and for a document detailing the interrogation methods allowed to the CIA. In response, the new Senate armed services committee chairman Carl Levin has hired three investigators to probe abuse of detainees and waste in Iraq. And Pelosi has restored the special authority that will require administration officials to sit for depositions from congressional committees of investigations. All this explains the sudden departure of White House counsel Harriet Miers, who, for all her devotion to Bush, was not deemed tough enough for the coming battle of subpoenas. In the last week of the year, the White House hired four in-house lawyers to prepare for the constitutional confrontation.


Reversing the Iraq resolution

The Democrats have decided not to fall into the White House trap of "denying funds for our boys overseas" by curbing the Iraq war budget. Instead, the new chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, Joe Biden, is plotting to revoke the October 2002 congressional resolution that authorised the use of force against Iraq. Referring to a "significant chemical and biological weapons capability" and to "the current Iraqi regime" of Saddam Hussein, the resolution has clearly lost its relevance and Biden is convinced he can rally a sizeable squad of Republican senators to vote with him. He likes to point to a new ABC-TV poll which asked senators how they would vote if the resolution were before them today. In 2002, 77 were in favour and only 23 against. But the poll found those numbers had fallen to 57-43. One of those who switched was Biden himself; Bush's fellow Texan Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison was another.

Is Giuliani shaping up for 2008?

Looking ahead to the presidential race, a striking nationwide poll from Investor's Business Daily shows the Republicans Rudy Giuliani and John McCain beating all three favoured Democrats—Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama. And do not believe Giuliani's protests that he has not yet decided to run. The latest CBS poll shows him ahead of McCain, and Rudy's annual New Year's eve party at his 22nd-floor Manhattan office overlooking Times Square was graced by the Semprini family, who have long run Republican politics in the first primary state of New Hampshire. Wayne Semprini was the party's state chairman, and his son Jeff will shortly join the Giuliani campaign team.