Winning the Little Battles?

The Washington Times (regardless of the opposing bias in which it was written) dives into the slow and "debilitating" process with which Democrats are approving President Bush's nominations in various open positions.

Since Jan. 7, the president has sent 229 major nominations to theSenate, but just 66 have been confirmed. Those figures exclude U.S.attorneys, marshals and judges, but the White House says thosenominations also have an alarmingly low confirmation rate — just 18 ofthe 46 (39 percent) sent to the Senate this year have been approved.

I thought "typical partisanship" much like you probably did.  However, the magazine compares the approval rate to the period in 1995 when Republicans gained control of the Senate and the House.

Back then, President Clintonsent up 188 nominations between January and June, winning approval for112 — a 60 percent confirmation rate.

While the article is written in a negative slant (which would also indicate that some pieces of the story could be missing), it seems like there are at least two things to consider:

1)  President Clinton didn't establish a precedent of nominating unqualified buddies for high-level positions, nor did his administration show a trend of vast and complete failure when those buddies faced tough decisions or situations (Iraq, the World Bank, Katrina, UN, etc); and

2)  This is a battle the Democrats are winning, in a stubborn but effective way.  Clearly the feet-dragging is frustrating the administration and slowing their business.  If the administration has made it clear that they aren't interested in listening to the people, the Congress, or the judiciary, why not come up with a simple strategy to slow the administration down?  It makes "running out the clock" much less fulfilling.