NYPost

May 10, 2001 -- Dubya's ducking Dem jabs & gibes

SEN. Hillary Clinton and her Democratic pals keep spoiling for a fight with President Bush - but Bush refuses to rumble. That makes him a much harder target for Dems.

When Democrats threw a fit over a few conservative judges whom Bush wanted to promote to the U.S. Court of Appeals, he left them off his list - at least for now - to help the others win Senate confirmation.

Bingo. The Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat, normally partisan Pat Leahy (Vt.), felt compelled to join Bush at the White House to unveil the judges' names and say reasonably nice things about the president.

That left one Dem who wants to challenge Bush in 2004, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), looking super-partisan when he vowed to blackball one judge anyway - in a home-state feud with Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.).

Instead of fighting, Bush is cutting deals on education with Ted Kennedy. He's peeled off a few moderate Senate Dems to back his tax cuts. And he's belatedly become something of a born-again environmentalist, at least on arsenic and salmonella.

Team Bush wouldn't even rise to the bait when self-proclaimed Yankee fan Hillary Clinton blamed him for her decision to skip Yankee Day at the White House - she claimed Bush should have picked a better day for her.

"The president has many powers, but changing the schedule of Major League Baseball, and when the Yankees play in Baltimore (an hour from the White House), isn't one of them," quipped Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, a lifelong Yankee fan.

Says Democratic strategist David Doak: "It's smart for Bush not to get into a fight. Presidents do well by making things work. When presidents are feuding and fighting, things don't get done. Democrats need to pick more fights."

-- Anonymous, May 10, 2001