America’s system of government has sustained itself since the nation’s birth through institutions representing three separate branches of authority the OG founders deemed critical to maintaining a sovereign democratic state. The sovereign part has been aided immensely by the geography we have been blessed with, oceans are formidable military obstacles. The democratic part has been more challenging, but it’s the diligent development of our basic institutions that has always carried the day through rough patches.
Equally important to the institutions themselves are the norms established for the way they interact among each other. The fine line between competition and cooperation, ally and adversary has defined how both domestic and foreign policy is imparted. It’s not too much to assert that critical balance is the gist of our political ecosystem; if it’s distorted, or worse destroyed, all bets are off and America is in big trouble.
That the Constitution grants Congress the power to declare war is a no-brainer; after all, war is expensive and lawmakers hold the power of the purse. Far more fuzzy is the conduct of foreign policy, and what level of oversight, what degree of interference Congress is allowed to exert on White House actions abroad. These questions didn’t become particularly pressing until the 20th century when technological progress and American capabilities conspired to tempt us toward a more active international role. Things came to a head as FDR recognized the national interests at stake in Europe’s war against Hitler and moved to provide Britain with military hardware for the effort. Congressional isolationists, still attuned to the boys lost in WWI, and determined to keep us out of another conflagration, moved with purpose to challenge Roosevelt’s authority. The Supreme Court issued the final word.
In 1936, ruling on Curtiss Wright Export Corporation’s challenge to a prohibition of arms sales pertaining to earlier hostilities between Bolivia and Paraguay, the Supreme Court issued a watershed decision on White House powers over foreign policy. The language of the 8-1 majority was unambiguous:
“While the Constitution does not explicitly say that all ability to conduct foreign policy is vested in the President, it is nonetheless given implicitly and by the fact that the executive, by its very nature, is empowered to conduct foreign affairs in a way that Congress cannot and should not.”
The President, declared the Court, is the “sole organ” of US policy abroad, and entitled to plenty of leeway when conducting relations with foreign powers. The immediate impact of the ruling was to enable FDR to provide the British Navy with hardware through a “lend-lease” arrangement. The lasting implications were it established legal precedent for an emerging internationalist US posture that WWII and the subsequent Cold War would solidify.
From “police actions” such as Korea and Vietnam to by-the-book Iraq I and post-9/11 carte blanche, the seesaw has tilted from one side to the other and back again. Yet and still, it’s always been about checks and balances in action, with individuals acting together on behalf of the institutions they are a part of. Isolationists and internationalists, hawks and doves, have been represented in both parties. And while partisanship is supposed to end “at the water’s edge,” America has learned the hard way, time and again, that a White House afforded too much leash is prone to destructive hubris, “breaking” nations they then own with consequences that addle US interests well into the future. Thoughtful lawmakers throughout the last 75 years have understood sometimes Republican and Democrat are required to unite for no other reason than supporting the vibrancy of the legislative branch they both work for. Checks and balances.
Donald Trump has no interest in the institutional power of the Presidency he can articulate past whiney tweets and rally gibberish. His pathological narcissism and abject intellectual laziness assure only minute to minute rabid impulses jockey to be a part of an infantile attention span. Nonetheless, Trump views anything other than strident sycophancy within the GOP he now expects to pay him hourly homage as apostasy. MAGA is patriotism, and whatever he decides to do is what’s best for “us” in the continual war against “them,” who are everyone else but us. As Trump would rage at a rally in Toledo after he killed Soleimani, only “we” don’t love terrorists. The farcical briefing his national security team provided US Senators on Thursday about the Soleimani assassination mirrored this attitude.
Those expecting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to uphold his chamber’s virtue and prerogative, after the White House ordered what most observers deemed an act of war without so much as a syllable of consultation, got a heaping helping of lamb. Turns out the guardian of the realm’s most pressing concern, posed to the MAGA braintrust with his usual docility, was whether Senate debate about war powers may hurt troop morale! Ascendent Trumpster Defense Secretary Mark Esper made clear it was follow or betray your country, this is no time for seditious democratic outbursts. It’s been taxing enough having to make up stories to uppity allies, we have to justify things to you? You’re cruising for a tweeting!
Pressed by incredulous Democrats when, if ever, the Administration planned to consider seeking congressional authorization, Secretary of State cum Dr. Strangelove Mike Pompeo declared he would not entertain hypotheticals. Chris Coons of Delaware repeatedly pressed the issue, asserting there was nothing hypothetical about war resulting from targeting Iran’s top military official for assassination. He got nowhere. Pompeo has become very good at saying nothing constructive over and over, his nervous smirk a sure tell he is lying yet again. Small wonder he is now Trump’s Iago of the month. This President simply doesn’t trust anyone honest. No worries about that with Pompeo.
The real shocker from the briefing is apparently the GOP libertarians do have a limit to their ideological expediency of Trump outrages, as both Mike Lee and Rand Paul decided their brand could not survive coddling the President on this one. You can’t cheer on abandoning Kurds to slaughter one month because “it’s none of our business,” and then support mindless escalation toward open ended regional war the next …. er, can you? Mitt Romney can and did, pronouncing himself satisfied with “the largely effective presentation.” Susan Collins of Maine was coy as she hinted a cabal might exist to explore war powers. Fat chance. Believe that when you see it! The myth of Collins as some GOP boat rocker was laid bare long ago. She is as reliable an aye as any Trumpie.
It becomes increasingly clear that the decision to kill Soleimani was made more as a function of Trump’s wild-eyed pre-occupation with impeachment than any US national interest. Seems the President wanted to quench GOP chickenhawks’ taste for Persian blood in order to secure more robust cooperation from them as jurors at his trial. Of course, he needn’t have worried, when it comes to fulfilling their roles as guardians of the Constitution and the institution they pledged to loyally serve in order to protect it, Republicans have clocked out. Now they merely parrot the rants of a mob and loyally serve its seditious champion. The cowardly abdication of duty added to the stew of ruin. BC