At a press conference after admitting that his Republican party had received a “thumpin’” in the mid-term congressional elections, a chastened President George W. Bush pledged to work in a bi-partisan manner during what he optimistically refers to as the remaining “one quarter of my presidency”.
The resignation of Donald Rumsfeld, his beleaguered defence secretary, was the first evident sop towards that effort. Yet within days of the election defeat, Mr Bush retreated to his old image as a partisan president. He re-nominated John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, a move fiercely opposed by Democrats. And on November 15, he re-nominated his six most controversial conservative judicial nominees – those whom the Senate had refused to support in the previous session.
