point of order?

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) bypassed Congress and installed Charles Pickering on the federal appeals court Friday in an election-year slap at Democrats who had blocked the nomination for more than two years.
Bush installed Pickering by a recess appointment, which avoids the confirmation process. Such appointments are valid until the next Congress takes office, in this case in January 2005.
Just a few years ago we read: Bush told James Barnes of the National Journal, "I'm a decisive person" who doesn't "read treatises," and he told Tucker Carlson, "I'm not interested in process. I want the results. If the process doesn't yield the right results, change the process." All very brusque and hearty.
But process, aka constitutionalism and the rule of law, has its charms, especially after the Clintons' depredations. And Bush should not advertise any allergy to serious things. A critical mass of lightness in a candidate causes the public mind to snap closed, with the judgment, "Not ready for prime time."
"You get the sense," Carlson writes, "that if Bush had chosen his own campaign slogan he would have printed bumper stickers that read GEORGE W. BUSH: SO SECURE, HE DOESN'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK OF HIM." But Jefferson, who knew something about declaring independence, recommended a "decent respect" for opinion.