New White House Counsel

Via TPM (sidebar), here's the scoop on the new White House Counsel, Fred F Fielding.

Fielding was persuaded to leave his lucrative position as a senior partner in the Washington law firm of Wiley, Rein & Fielding with "an appeal to patriotism" and an assurance that he would not just be the President's lawyer but would be deeply involved in Congressional strategy and negotiations, the official said.

These negotiations will be something like... how about you convince the Pres to sign our Democratic legislation instead of vetoing it, and we'll forget to subpoena people for illegal wire-tapping? I could be wrong, but I think the Democrats are going to trade Bush back all the skeletons in his closet one by one in order to push their liberal agenda. Me, I'd rather see accountability and transparency than blackmailing a lame duck into an effective majority.

"The key for the Administration is going to be drawing the lines on these boundaries of executive privilege and access to documents and congressional oversight — drawing the lines around the really important issues and trying to be a little more flexible on the others," said a former colleague of Fielding. "They're not going to fold, because Fielding is a very serious, hard-nosed person, and he's a tough negotiator. But they're also going not to take a totally stonewall position. That doesn't mean they're going to cave in. What it means is they're going to negotiate and focus on the things that they're truly protecting and that are truly important."

So....what do you think the administration is going to focus on protecting? And what will they give away to protect it? So much to negotiate, and the president has a bucketful of liabilities. It's a bad time to be a conservative.