I don't really think it's a partisan issue. I think Obama would have co-opted the "I'll veto all legislation with earmarks" promise if he'd thought of it first. Earmarks in general aren't popular, outside of wonky political discussions everyone is against them, and when you get into the wonky discussions they are defended bipartisanly. All I'm saying is that promising to veto every bill with earmarks is not practically possible. It sounds good, it was quoted here by numerous posters, and I just wanted to bring up the fact that it's nothing more then a pipe dream.

Though Any president could use the visibility of their office to combat frivolous earmarks, ultimatly, like you say, Matt it comes down to Congresses willingness to comply. And really it's an uphill battle. When you look at congressional approval ratings congress as a whole gets abismol approval ratings, yet in their individual districts, congressmen generaly do well. Alot of this has to do with the fact they fight to get earmarks for their regions. An example, here in Oregon is funding for Salmon recovery efforts. It's costly, but commercial fishing is big buisness here. The whole Oregon caucus, including the republicans, helped get that spending attached to a completely unrelated spending bill. Now your average Oregonian is all for that, the money comes here to our state, to support an important local industry. But if you're not from Oregon, that probably seems like a waste of money. Things like this happens in every congressional district. So to just carte blaunche announce that you're going to fight earmarks, and your grand solution is to Veto every bill with them... Well at the end of day I don't think that's anything more then political grandstanding.