The House did not override a Bush veto. It voted to override that veto. If the Senate also votes to override, then there's an override. If not, there's no override, so how could the House have overridden?
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Overriding Concerns
The House did not override a Bush veto. It voted to override that veto. If the Senate also votes to override, then there's an override. If not, there's no override, so how could the House have overridden?
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5 comments:
Cool Article, wells spotted. These ill conceived headlines seem to pop up all over the place.
It appears that the New York Times and USA Today fixed this mistake for their more current online editions (NYT and USA Today). My guess is that they read your post and made the corrections based on that.
Using override is an attempt at efficiency, which fails at effectiveness. Do you have a similar concern with voters electing a president? It is a similar sort of error, seeking to indicate success, but not doing so dead-on. I vote, but the nation elects. The house votes, but congress overrides.
Voters elect a president the same way members of Congress override a veto. The problem is that you can't say an override has occurred when only one of two sets of those members have completed their half of the task.
The danger of this misleading headline is that most readers will now believe the water bill will be enacted due to the "override" of Bush's veto. People scan the headlines and don't often digest the fuller meaning.
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