MASTERS OF THE SENATE:

Shift of Power to White House Reshapes Political Landscape (ADAM NAGOURNEY, December 22, 2002, NY Times)

President Bush has created one of the most powerful White Houses in at least a generation, prominent Democrats and Republicans say, reshaping the Washington political equation in a way that provides him both considerable opportunity and peril in the year ahead.

With the all-but-certain rise of his close ally, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, as Republican leader, the president has consolidated what even Democrats say is a stunning degree of authority in the White House at the halfway point of his four-year term.

The perception that Mr. Bush and his chief political counsel, Karl Rove, orchestrated a coup in the Senate - notwithstanding the official White House denials that it had anything to do with Senator Trent Lott's decision on Friday to give up his leadership post - has only enhanced what veteran political strategists say is the political potency of the White House.

"This White House is very, very strong," said William J. Bennett, a prominent conservative who had pressed for Mr. Lott's removal. "There's now a unified theory of the White House in this town: It is strong, it is competent, it's all going in the same direction, and it doesn't leak."

On his MSNBC show with Bill Press this Friday, Pat Buchanan spoke with awe of the way the Senate had been broken. He said in the Nixon and Reagan White Houses no one would have dreamed of intervening so directly in their affairs. Karl Rove better not slip up or the long knives will come out damned quickly. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 22, 2002 6:57 AM