>[...] and W has been thru the experience of working
>with a legislature not under his thumb in Texas.
Not under W's exactly, but under the thumb of conservative Democrats Bob Bullock (Lt. Governer and thus President of the Senate) and Pete Laney (Speaker of the House), whose agendas coincided almost perfectly with his. Dubya was a bill-signer, while Bullock and Laney used the huge weight of their offices to push his priorities through, and to thoroughly marginalize the progressives from Austin and the Rio Grande Valley.
If we want to blame anyone for Bush being president, Bullock would be a good person to start with. Though to his credit, he did have speak one of my favorite lines: "In life, you only have so many hard-ons. It would be a shame to waste any of them."
Eric