Read em and Weep

If you needed an example of the typical rhetorical signing statement, then look no further than to President Bush's signing of S.1--"The Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007."

This bill is in response to a theme the Democrats ran on in the 06 Midterm election, where lobbyist corruption became the Republican's Waterloo.

This bill was introduced back in January of this year, and immediately drew a "Statement of Administration Policy," or SAP. There Bush blasted the bill for not containing earmark reform (even though he is responsible for a number of earmark requests in many of the bills in this Congress), and he admonished Congress to give him the Line Item Veto (despite the fact that he has not used the veto responsibly--see Woodward's expose on Greenspan).

This type of signing statement is what you get when the President's opinion numbers are down AND he is faced with a bill that resonates with the American public. Because interest is high, the chances of using his signing statement to eradicate parts of the bill would only bring him more grief.

So he is happy to sign, but then launches into a tirade about the shortcomings of the bill: The language is confusing, it will hurt the recruitment of qualified candidates (as if a qualified candidate truly exists), and so on.

But what you get is a president who is clearly not happy to have to sign this particular piece of legislation.