Bush's information brownout. (Giving Congress Short Shrift)

New Leader, The, March, 2002 by Andrew J. Glass

WASHINGTON THE BROUHAHA over why key legislators were long kept in the dark about the "shadow government" has pointed up a deeper problem: a lack of respect for the Congress at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. This, plus an obsession with secrecy, has created tensions between Presidem George W. Bush and such top Democrats as Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri. That is the real reason compromises on several important bills, like a Federal budget for the coming fiscal year, have failed to fall into place.

Bush now sees himself as a wartime President who should be free to govern without getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty of domestic legislation. He pays scant attention to the...