Biden's power play going bust - Blackmail blocks antiterror diplomat to help a donor (Pattiz)

The connection was obvious to senators of both parties, though nobody said so publicly. Four days before Sen. Joseph Biden declared he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination if he could find the financing, he held hostage an important, non-controversial Bush diplomatic appointee. His intent: to force President Bush to reappoint a billionaire backer of Biden to a government oversight board.

Nobody expected Biden's move when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened last Wednesday to send routine nominations to the floor. Biden, the committee's ranking Democrat, blocked Senate consideration of White House personnel director Dina Habib Powell as the State Department officer named to use public diplomacy to improve U.S. relations in the Middle East. As the price for releasing her, he demanded retention on the Broadcasting Board of Governors of radio tycoon Norman Pattiz.

It won't work. Bush has no intention of naming Pattiz. Biden rejected his staff's advice and let Powell's nomination out of committee Wednesday, but he can still keep his hold on her to block Senate floor action. The veteran senator's audacious maneuver was extraordinary. Senators occasionally trade off confirmations on two controversial nominees. But it is without precedent for a senator to pressure a president to make a specific appointment by this blatant political use of the confirmation process -- a process already in disrepair because of the mass Democratic assault on Bush's judicial nominees.

Biden tacitly admits he is just playing politics by not even pretending there is anything wrong with Powell's selection as assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. At her May 26 hearing by a foreign relations subcommittee, she was praised by Democrats who pressed to get the Egyptian-born Powell quickly on her Middle East assignment.

It's all about Pattiz, Biden admits. The senator issued a statement calling the president ''short-sighted and doing the country a disservice'' by not reappointing Pattiz to one of four Democratic slots on the eight-member board.

Pattiz, founder and chairman of the Westwood One radio conglomerate, in 2000 was a generous Democratic contributor ($360,000 for that election cycle alone) and an overnight White House guest. President Bill Clinton named him that year to the BBG, which oversees the U.S. government's worldwide radio and television broadcasting services.

Bush in 2002 reappointed Pattiz as part of a conventional package deal to get the Senate, then under Democratic control, to confirm a Republican nominee to the board: conservative Kenneth Tomlinson, former editor of the Reader's Digest and Reagan-era head of the Voice of America. Pattiz and Tomlinson, now the BBG chairman, was no marriage made in heaven. According to sources, Tomlinson viewed Pattiz as a Hollywood control freak.

Still, Pattiz would have had another term this year had his name not appeared as a signatory in a Sept. 23, 2004, New York Times advertisement assailing Bush's record and calling for his defeat. That broke the unwritten rule that a minority appointee cannot attack the president who appointed him.

When Pattiz was sworn in for his second term Sept. 10, 2002, Biden made the cross-town journey from Capitol Hill to deliver a lengthy panegyric for his political benefactor. In 1992, Pattiz's Westwood One was fined $75,000 for offering to illegally reimburse employees who contributed to Biden's aborted 1988 presidential campaign.

Pattiz played a leading role in establishing a radio music service to the Arab world, but associates say he was not the dominant force Biden's statement claims. Certainly, he is less important in public diplomacy for the Middle East than Dina Powell would be.

Sen. John Sununu, a Republican who was there, described to me Powell's confirmation hearing almost a month ago: ''We all agreed her job should be filled immediately because of the impact of public diplomacy.'' The hearing record bears him out. Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes urged committee approval ''promptly, in the near future.'' Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold promised ''strong allies on both sides of the aisle.'' Biden was not present.

Preparing The Next Obstructionist Target

Senate Democrats have selected their next target for their new obstructionist tactics of demanding more and more documentation as an excuse to filibuster an executive nomination. In this case, however, they won't demand documentation on the nominee, but on the man whom the nominee will replace:

The senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee has warned the Pentagon that he may block the nomination of a new defense policy chief unless documents involving the departing policy head -- Douglas J. Feith -- are turned over for review.
The action by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) threatens to hold up another important presidential appointment as lawmakers remain deadlocked with the Bush administration over the nomination of John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. That dispute, too, involves Democratic requests for documents the White House has refused to surrender. ...

Levin has criticized Feith for portraying the relationship as more extensive and significant than U.S. intelligence agencies thought at the time. Administration officials have defended Feith's prewar efforts as reflecting a legitimate attempt to provide an alternative analysis. The Pentagon produced many documents that Levin requested, but has withheld others, citing confidentiality and legal concerns.

The Pentagon insists that it has complied with most of Levin's requests, even though the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reviewed the same documents and concluded that nothing illegal occurred. Two documents have been withheld for security reasons: one is a legal analysis of the policy, which presumably Levin could hire an attorney to perform himself. The Pentagon describes the other document as material to be used in prosecuting foreign nationals when the need arises and wants to keep it quiet, for obvious reasons. Both apparently have been seen by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which as I said found no impropriety.

Levin simply wants to hold his own probe, and so far the Administration has been remarkably cooperative, even though Levin's probe has no official status within Congress. It's a leftover of the 2004 presidential election, when the Democrats demonized Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and other "neocons" for supposedly warping American foreign policy. However, the American people voted on policy in late 2004 when they re-elected George Bush to the presidency. Levin and the other Senate Democrats simply cannot believe that they lost that election and that the American people endorsed Bush's foreign policy, and they're trying to do anything they can to thwart the will of the electorate.

In the case of John Bolton, the filibuster represents the Democrats' attempt to derail Bush's stance on the United Nations. That is bad enough, but this new effort targets the war effort while we have men and women fighting overseas, and in any case only has the effect of keeping the man they dislike in the very position from which Democrats want him gone. It makes little sense, except as partisan gameplaying, using the Department of Defense as a pawn. It's time to consider the broader application of the Byrd option to all executive-branch confirmations, as the Democrats have clearly shown themselves to have committed to playing obstructionist games all session long.

-- Captain Ed, captainsquartersblog.com/mt/

Too late IMHO. Biden has made his play. Now exactly what his true motives are about filibustering Bolton is only an educated guess at best.

Employing constant delay tactics by 'LibBi' and the like does nothing but harm the Dems politically, but most importantly, it's a disservice to this nation as to refuse to conduct business as elected and sworn to do so. Most of the politicking, so to speak, has already occurred with Bolton in committee with deals cut behind closed doors, so I say, let's get on with business in the Senate. Stop the public grandstanding.

When a person is elected POTUS, certain privileges come with that office as for him to select his staff and make appointments as needed. I don't remember the GOP pulling such demeaning and lower than low antics in the House or Senate during the Clinton years.

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