So says Capitol Watch.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell shared a table with President Bush at a White House dinner for the National Governor’s Association.The sports-minded commander-in-chief asked whose state had the best basketball team.

Rell, recently returned from the NGA meeting, said today she immediately raised her hand.

“He said, ‘I meant men,’ ” Rell said.

At least he knew the women’s team was ranked first.

– Mark Pazniokas

The world must most certainly be upside down.  For if not, then how does one explain that the “best” budget of the Bush Presidency, in terms of its ability to waste American tax dollars frivolously, has been passed through a Democrat-majority Congress.  Bear in mind, please, that this functional reality has little to do with the ability of Congressional Democrats to tighten their belts and significantly more to do with the fact that the Democratic leadership seems to have wholly kowtowed to President Bush.  Columns from the Wall Street Journal and the National Review’s David Freddoso examine this point.

First, from the Journal editorial today:

“Both sides are claiming victory, which usually means that taxpayers are the losers. That’s less true this year because Mr. Bush has used his veto power to back Congress down from its typical excesses.”

. . .

“House Republicans voted against the omnibus bill en masse, but the truth is that many of them and their Senate brethren privately wanted it to pass as much as Democrats did. They want their earmarks too. Ray LaHood of Illinois is typical of those GOP appropriators who helped to drive their party into the minority by spending like Democrats. They look good only in comparison to Democrats, who have shown this year that their claims of “fiscal discipline” are entirely phony, except when they refer to raising taxes.

The larger lesson of this year is that divided government has its uses. By using his veto pen, and with the help of House Republicans in particular, Mr. Bush has been able to reduce the rate of spending growth and continue to shape policy. The Schip health care vetoes were especially important in showing Democrats that the GOP couldn’t be easily rolled, despite a media assault and GOP Senate surrender. That’s more than we expected, even if it’s not as much as Mr. Bush might have achieved. May we have even more virtuous gridlock next year.”

And then the National Review piece from yesterday:

“After a full year of partisan rancor and insubstantial political votes taken on the House floor, [Pelosi's] Congress is crashing on several important deadlines this week as members prepare to leave for Christmas. And Pelosi is about to be owned by the Republican minority.That’s right: By the end of this week, she will likely have lost five major legislative battles, almost simultaneously.”. . . “In essence, Democrats are capitulating on the Iraq question for a second time this year, after being elected with a clear mandate to hasten the unpopular war’s end — a bitter double-defeat that comes after dozens of symbolic votes on the war. And Democratic House members will be voting (probably today) to start a process that they know will continue the war funding — voting for it before voting against it. It will enrage the Left and, oddly, make President Bush — who has never understood, negotiated with, nor cooperated well with even Republican congresses — appear to be some kind of legislative mastermind.”

. . . 

“One of the Democrats most promising issues this year has been the State Childrens’ Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). They have sought to turn the Clinton-era program, a subsidy for poor children, into a free lunch for the middle class. Republicans, who hoped merely to extend the current program beyond the next election, were pummeled rhetorically for their resistance to the change. Yet after last night’s negotiations, sources on the Hill say that they are about to get exactly what they wanted — another extension of the program, as it exists, through March 2009.”

One could only hope to see the faces of embittered liberals when they read the bit about President Bush as a ‘legislative mastermind’.  Nonetheless, other than pontificating and the projection of blame (see our own Congressman Murphy’s characterization of the U.S. Senate as a “threat to democracy as we know it“), the Democrat-controlled majority seems to be blessedly ineffectual.  We join the WSJ in hoping for continued mediocrity from the Congress in 2008.