Not all of us who drink are poets. Some of us drink because we're not poets.

Kagro X over at Kos slaps Congressional Democrats around pretty good for not standing up to Bush, but there's a certain sentiment I don't get with regards to how people have sized up the President.

And the reason it's important is that it also gives us a window into one of the other hot issues of the moment: how far will Bush go to stonewall Congressional oversight?

That's an issue in which, once again, most Congressional Democrats assume that the game will be played within the confines of the old rules, and that the president "wouldn't dare" instruct the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia not to prosecute anyone the Congress voted to hold in contempt for failure to comply with its subpoenas, for instance. Or that he "wouldn't dare" pardon (for all intents and purposes) Scooter Libby so far in advance of the end of his term. Or that he "wouldn't dare" to simply "defy" an Act of Congress.

I think that makes it a fair question for those of us who are concerned to ask whether there's a "Plan B" -- not for Iraq, but for Congress, in the event that Bush should "dare" to do any of these things the old rules of politics made us so sure he wouldn't.

One thing often ignored when we consider what makes George W. Bush, well, George W. Bush is that he's not a politician. He's not really much of anything when you stop and think about it. Here's a guy that spent most of his life up until his forties rich and drunk. He could give a rat's ass about politics up to that point. Then - when he did decide to involve himself in politics - it was more of a whim and because he really couldn't do anything else that he decided to run (unsuccessfully) for congress and later to be elected Governor of Texasistan.

Why would anyone expect a guy who clearly hadn't spent a single moment of his life contemplating the constitution, the shared values that make up the United States or the traditions and unwritten rules that are the glue that hold congress together and keep us from killing each other to be concerned with honoring any of those ideas if they stood in the way of something he wanted?

So much of what makes us who we are aren't things that are written down on paper but are things we agree to. That's the embodiement of patriotism. This is the most unpatriotic President we've ever had.