After US election, partisan collision looms

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - Aftershocks from the US midterm election continued to reverberate, as victorious Democrats appeared headed for a collision with President George W. Bush over Iraq and other issues.

Having clinched control of both houses of Congress in last week's vote, Democratic lawmakers said voters were clearly demanding a change in Iraq policy and called for urgent action.

Democratic Senator Carl Levin said American voters had spoken "overwhelmingly" for a change in Iraq and urged a reduction of US troops to begin "in four to six months."

Levin, expected to head the Senate Armed Services Committee in the next Congress, told ABC television the US military presence in Iraq could not be "open-ended".

But White House chief of staff Josh Bolten said the administration would not support a timetable for pulling troops out of Iraq.

"As soon as we can get them out, we will," Bolten told CNN's "Late Edition".

Striking a conciliatory tone after Bush's Republicans suffered defeat last week, Bolten reiterated that the president was ready to work with Democrats on Iraq policy as well as immigration reform and other issues.

"Nobody can be happy with the situation in Iraq right now," said Bolten.

"What we have been doing has not worked well enough or fast enough. So it is clearly time to put fresh eyes on the problem," he said.

Democrats have welcomed the replacement of Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary as a positive step towards shifting the approach to the Iraq war, but said it was long overdue.

Despite the emphasis on bipartisan cooperation, the White House appeared headed for conflict as it planned to ask the current Republican-controlled Senate to confirm John Bolton as UN ambassador, a move strongly opposed by Democrats and some moderate Republicans.

A previous attempt failed but the White House said it would try again.

Democratic Senator Joe Biden, expected to be the next chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the White House for returning to the controversial nomination.

"We're going to have a hearing on him (Bolton). There is going to be a vote on him. He's going to lose," Biden told ABC's "This Week", and then offered Bush a bit of advice.

"Mr. President, if you really mean it, that you really want to cooperate ... play by the rules. You have a lot of competent people. Send somebody else," Biden said.

With Democrats promising a break from Republican policies on a range of issues -- including on the environment and homeland security -- some commentators said the potential for bipartisan harmony seemed unlikely.

When the Democrats take over Congress in January, the party will have authority over day-to-day operations of both the House and Senate, as well as the legislative agenda set by committees that oversee the US military, foreign relations and the government's purse strings.

In more election fallout, the president's already dismal standing has dropped to an all-time low.

Bush's popularity has fallen to just 31 percent, according to a Newsweek poll released Sunday.

The poll was one of the first measures of the president's standing following the Republicans' disastrous election showing.

Bush has the lowest job approval ratings of his tenure, the magazine said, among the worst in modern times for a US president.

Asked why they thought Democrats came out on top in the November 7 election, 85 percent of respondents said they thought a "major reason" was disapproval over the administration's handling of the war in Iraq.

Other major reasons cited by Americans included disapproval of Bush's overall job performance (71 percent), dissatisfaction with how Republicans have handled government spending and the deficit (67 percent), disapproval of the overall performance of Republicans in Congress (63 percent) and Democrats' ideas and proposals for changing course in Iraq (61 percent).