[sam h]

Here is an interesting political fact I ran across when reading about this Bush-McCain mess. If this legislation had passed without Bush's blessing and he had vetoed it, this would have been his first veto ever since being elected president.

So who was the last president to last even one term, let alone the two that Bush is heading for, without exercizing veto powers? John Quincy Adams.

Having your party control both houses helps, of course, although that has happened on many occasions and the GOP didn't really control the Senate for a significant part of Bush's first term. We seem to be in an era of unprecedented party discipline and cooperation between the White House and the Republican congress. Maybe this is partly to explain why so many of the GOP's actions have strayed so far from traditional conservative values under this administration. There's very little room for anything more than the symbolic protest of denouncing Alaskan bridges on the house floor.