In Washington today, President Bush launched Operation Stay Relevant II. Following up on his October strategy to wield the veto pen to "ensure that I am relevant," the wildly unpopular lame duck is holding 84 of his executive nominees hostage until he gets Senate blessing for the recess appointment of torture advocate Steven Bradbury. This latest gambit is but another part of George W. Bush's strategy of maximum confrontation guiding the remainder of his enfeebled presidency.
Maximum confrontation serves three purposes for President Bush. First, it is an essential ingredient in preventing Democrats from winning victories of any kind and claiming successes as they head into the 2008 elections. Second, perpetual conflict with the "Democrat" Party, whether over nominees, filibusters or vetoes, helps mobilize the President's hard right base. And last, as Robert Draper's recent biography Dead Certain makes clear, the image of the battling, brawling President helps Bush cement his legacy as a man of resolve, unbending in the face of either opposition or reality.
Unbending certainly describes Bush's efforts to install Bradbury and other controversial nominees by side-stepping the Senate via the recess appointment process. Bradbury, Bush's stalled choice for the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, represents a shot across the bow.
Bradbury, after all, authored the two secret memos in 2005 authorizing the CIA to use so-called enhanced interrogation techniques against terrorism detainees. In his February 2005 confirmation hearings as Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress to conceal the administration's violations of the Geneva Conventions, a regime of torture justified by Bradbury's memos. In December 2005, President Bush then added a signing statement to the Detainee Treatment Act, codifying the regime of torture Bradbury authored.
(For more on Steven Bradbury's role in Bush administration lawbreaking, see the PBS Frontline documentary, "Cheney's Law.")
But as ThinkProgress described, Bradbury is so central to Bush's game of brinksmanship that the President Bush balked at Harry Reid's offer to let other nominees go forward:

According to Reid, in December, he met with the White House and agreed to allow more than 84 of the President's nominees to go through. Bush, however, insisted that unless the Senate agreed to Bradbury's recess appointment, "he wouldn't make a deal." "It's Brabury, or nobody," Bush reportedly told Reid.

So even as Attorney General Michael Mukasey refuses to authorize a DOJ criminal probe into the CIA's use of waterboarding, President Bush is standing by one of its architects. In his Operation Stay Relevant II dog and pony show at the White House today, Bush ignored his own party's past stonewalling of President Clinton's nominees and demanded an "up or down vote":

"Rise to your responsibilities; give these nominees the vote they deserve, and confirm them as soon as possible."

Then again, what else could the lamest of lame duck presidents say? He's just trying to stay relevant.