Saving the Obama Presidency

Sandy Levinson

For reasons known only to himself, President Obama has decided to risk his presidency on the outcome of the congressional vote.  As I see it, the best way to assure the destruction of his second term is to authorize a strike that makes almost literally no sense in terms of the public rationales that have been offered.  There is literally no measure of what might count as "success," other than deterring additional use of chemical weapons.  Given that there is no evidence that Assad ordered the use of those weapons in the first place, one might well imagine that he will make some efforts to make sure they are not used again.  (There is something particularly indecent about the Obama Administration claiming that Commanders-in-Chief must be held responsible per se, a reversion, it appears to the Yamashita doctrine right after World War II.  This, of course, is the Administration that has resolutely refused to hold anyone from the Bush Administration responsible for what is at least equally banned by international and domestic law, i.e., torture, or, for that matter, to pursue members of the Bush I Administration for their toleration of Saddam Hussein's use of poison gas against Iran and then Iraqis. ) 

It is ominous that Obama's chief domestic support is coming from John ("I never met a war I didn't want to get into") McCain.  We all live with (and are victimized by) analogies.  I keep thinking of Vietnam, in which thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese lost their lives in order to vindicate American "credibility" and fight against the perception that we were a "paper tiger."  And, of course, I keep thinking of The Sleepwalkers and the insouciance with which Europe slid into a truly catastrophic war with no redeeming features.  Perhaps a "surgical strike," though unlikely to be effective, will not in fact provoke any countermeasures by Syria or Iranian proxies, and we'll look back at this as a relative non-event and I can legitimately be dismissed as an hysteric who failed to rally 'round the presidential flag.  But, of course, maybe not.....

So it's overdetermined that I hope strongly that a coalition of Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats, both responding to their constituents who are properly dubious about American intervention, will refuse authorization.

That, of course, raises the question of whether the President will claim the authority to act regardless of what Congress says.  Steve Griffin's excellent post indicates why this may be a true "constitutional moment," for if Obama were to defy a vote of non-authorization, I think there would certainly be (reasonable) calls for impeachment.  And this time no one could claim that the charges don't rise to the level of the most fundamental "high crime and misdemeanor."  It may be, as Steve suggests in his book, that we have accepted as a "common-law/constitutional-law" reality of our political system, based on over a half-century of practice by Presidents beginning with Truman and going through Obama (see Libya)  than Presidents do indeed have the legal right (in part because they have the military capacity) to engage in unilateral "war-like acts" so long, for example, as they don't involve the fabled "boots on the ground."  Though, of course, President George HW Bush (the so-called "good Bush") publicly asserted the right to go to war over Kuwait regardless of what Congress did, which obviously involved thousands upon thousands "boots on the ground."  I feel that I should revive my series of dispatches of "reports from a constitutional dictatorship," because that is really what we are talking about.

A last comment:  If we lived in a parliamentary system (which we don't), then the proper response to a "no" vote in Congress would be the resignations of Obama, John Boehner (who is supporting the resolution), and Nancy Pelosi (ditto).  One wonders if any of the "yes" votes will be influenced by the realization that Obama will be President until Jan. 20, 2017.  If so, that is just another illustration of our defective Constitution, which encourages support of "the only President we've got" because there is no way to get rid of him/her prior to the next election (save, of course, for impeachment).  .
Posted 3:35 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]