Good detail point. But no matter how he phrased his request, it came off as "I'm not going to recess appoint Bolton."
Mr. REID. Mr. President, yesterday at the White House it was reported that President Bush told Republican leaders to keep fighting to get Mr. Bolton, the President's nominee to be U.N. ambassador, an up-or-down vote. Keep fighting--that was the message delivered by the President.The link to the Congressional Record is a PDF file - the FR link is HTML. Reid has a few real gems in there.109th Congress - Page S6980 - June 22, 2005
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1427992/posts?page=15#15
The care and feeding of the US Senate is a critical test of Presidential effectiveness.
Most fail.
And, you might think, "so what?" were it not for Supreme Court appointments and treaties, two Presidentio-senatorial acts which last a long, long time.
Frist is a weakling. LBJ could make a US Senator sit up and bark like a dog.
The opposition Senators need to be slapped down hard or Bush's problems will get worse. Except that Bush can't do the slapping.