What do the Democrats and the left do a month from now when Bolton is our ambassador to the UN and Bush's judges sit in their courts? How do they sharpen their rhetorical attacks? What procedural gambits can they deploy that they have not already used? In short, how will they react to the terrible realization that they have lost and no strategem can offer hope of reversing that situation?

Bush has a perfect opportunity to emulate one of our Tennessee heros: Andrew Jackson, who had a uniform policy of rubbing the Senate's nose in any failure to confirm one of his nominees. During his 8 years, he (1) used recess appointments to put people in office who had actually been rejected (not just bottled up in Committee or not getting a floor vote, as is usually hwat happens today) by the Senate;

(2) after a nominee had been rejected, submitted the szme name again;

(3) After a commissioner of a land office in one of the states was stalled, he simply left the post vacant and shut the office;

(4) Submitted names that were even more objectionable than the rejected or stalled nominee.

(5) Shut down all patronage-- every bit-- for Senators behind rejecting or stsalling a nominee.

They did not call him Old Hickory for nothing. In many ways, not an admirable man (I think he was bat shit crazy, but luck was on the USA's side), but after his first term, he almost never had a problem with getting his nominees approved.