ASHINGTON, Nov. 21 - In the afterglow of his re-election, President Bush declared that he had ''earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." But the capital that he put on the line was not enough this weekend, when recalcitrant House conservatives refused to back an intelligence bill for which he had personally lobbied.
The compromise bill unraveled when two influential Republican House committee chairmen, Representatives Duncan Hunter of California and F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. of Wisconsin, would not support it. At a time when Republicans control the White House and both houses of Congress, the outcome raises questions about how much power the president has on Capitol Hill and how he intends to exert it in a second term.
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Members of both parties, and independent analysts, said Sunday that they had no doubt Congress would have passed the measure had President Bush flexed his muscle, as he did last year for Medicare prescription drug legislation that passed by a narrow margin over conservatives' objections. The intelligence bill had bipartisan support in the Senate.
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On Sunday, some Democrats wondered aloud if the Pentagon's back-channel lobbying had the tacit approval of the president.
"I find it very hard to believe that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense would do all of that in contravention of the commander in chief's wishes," said one House negotiator, Representative Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, in an interview on Sunday. Mr. Bush, Mr. Menendez said, "has the dirty work being done by the Pentagon people, using Duncan Hunter."
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/22/politics/22assess.htmledited to add, the study is a delay tactic by * to make it look like he gives two hoots about reforming the CIA.