The Veto Era Begins

Keystone-enabling legislation will travel to the President’s desk this week, where it will die by the Obama’s pen:

The expected Keystone veto, the third and most significant of Mr. Obama’s six years in office, would most likely be followed by presidential vetoes of bills that could emerge to make changes in the Affordable Care Act, impose new sanctions on Iran and roll back child nutrition standards, among others.

For Mr. Obama, his Cross Townsend black roller-ball pen will become an extension of his second-term strategy to act alone in the face of Republican opposition and safeguard his legislative record.

“It’s a new period of his administration,” said James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. “He will use the veto to protect his past record and not allow things he disagrees with to go forward.”

This is good news. One of the GOP Congress’s jobs is to pin Obama (and the Democrats) firmly in place, by sending him lots of popular legislation to veto.