By Dennis Byrne
Human Events
Turns out that Barack Obama, the sainted Democratic presidential hopeful, can be every bit the hack as the next run-of-the-mouth politician.
Not long after announcing the creation of a committee to explore his possible presidential run, the Illinois senator high-tailed it to New Orleans to throw some of the mud left behind by Hurricane Katrina on President George W. Bush.
With due solemnity, Obama joined the chorus of political opportunists blaming Bush's incompetence and indifference for New Orleans' sorry state. Talking to a special hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Obama said that in the weeks after the hurricane,"an ashamed nation looked at what had been allowed to happen here and said, 'Never again. Never will we turn our backs on these people. Never will we forget what happened here.'" (One would hope that in the future he would never again resort to the cliché "never again.") Money, he said, is "still not reaching ordinary folks" quickly enough. "Until it does, all the numbers, the meetings and the planning that's being done is inadequate."
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Monday, February 05, 2007
Tug o' war and Constitution
By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune
Now that the Super Bowl is over, we can return fulltime to idolizing Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Just kidding. But now that I have your attention, does anyone think that the Iraq war is pushing us into a constitutional crisis? President Bush, citing his constitutional powers as commander in chief, says he decides whether to increase U.S. troops in Iraq. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and others are holding out the possibility that constitutionally they can force an end to the war by defunding the troops.
True, this isn't as much fun as fulminating about Joe "Mouth-Run-Amuck" Biden's remark that Obama is the first "clean" African-American presidential candidate, or laying into Democratic hypocrisy for giving Biden a pass while skewering former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) for his "macaca" comment.
But it's more important, because America's system of checks and balances could face a tough test. The Constitution's framers separated our government's powers to prevent the abuse of governmental powers exercised by kings and would-be tyrants, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. The framers, tutored by such political theorists of their time as Baron de Montesquieu, concluded that the best way to check the abuse of governmental power was to divvy it up among different, sometimes competing, branches of government. Hence, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our federal government.
It has worked well, except when an issue falls into that in-between gray area, when opposing branches stubbornly claim jurisdiction. Such as with war powers. The Constitution explicitly gives the president the exclusive power to command the armed forces, meaning he gets to decide how they are used. The Constitution gives Congress the explicit power to declare war, and to raise and support armies.
But does it give Congress the power to undeclare a war? Can it tell the president to roll it all up and send everyone home? Anti-war lawmakers say it can, because only Congress can appropriate the money that the president spends, whether it is on a war or a memorial to the late bandleader Lawrence Welk. Without money to, say, buy ammo, the Army would have no choice but to pack up and fly home. Or stay with empty rifles and be slaughtered. One might say that no congressman in his right mind would want to leave the president with that sort of choice.
On the other hand, Congress can appropriate money for, say, sending the troops "over the horizon" to Kuwait, but the chief executive can defy Congress (beyond using his veto) by simply refusing to deploy the troops.
This could be a fine mess, precisely the kind of dispute that the Supreme Court often wants to avoid. So what to do? Congress can't raise its own army to "force" the president to do what it wants. The president can't send a tank or two over to Capitol Hill to make Congress do what he wants.
So, it comes back to doing what is reasonable and wise. And if you want a case in which it was unreasonable and unwise for Congress to conduct a war and, in effect, make foreign policy (another of the president's explicit powers), check out how the Vietnam War ended. Officially, the Paris Peace Accords, negotiated by the chief executive, ended it, but the war between the North and the South continued with our chiseled-in-stone promise to reply with "severe retaliatory action" if the North ever violated the treaty.
Which the North did by expanding its military force in the South. President Gerald Ford confessed he could do nothing about it because Congress had passed the Case-Church Amendment that forbade any more U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. All Ford could do was respond with diplomatic protests, which further emboldened the North and demoralized the South. When Congress subsequently withdrew its financial aid for the South, the end came. It was a North Vietnamese tank that broke down the gates to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, not a pajama-clad Viet Cong. Thanks to Congress, we lost an ally and the North imposed a brutal and deadly regime on the South.
Notwithstanding the Constitution, it has been a long-held belief and practice that the conduct of wars and foreign policy belong to the president.
That's for a reason. Because while the president might or might not bungle how he uses those powers, it is nearly certain that Congress will.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
Now that the Super Bowl is over, we can return fulltime to idolizing Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
Just kidding. But now that I have your attention, does anyone think that the Iraq war is pushing us into a constitutional crisis? President Bush, citing his constitutional powers as commander in chief, says he decides whether to increase U.S. troops in Iraq. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and others are holding out the possibility that constitutionally they can force an end to the war by defunding the troops.
True, this isn't as much fun as fulminating about Joe "Mouth-Run-Amuck" Biden's remark that Obama is the first "clean" African-American presidential candidate, or laying into Democratic hypocrisy for giving Biden a pass while skewering former Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) for his "macaca" comment.
But it's more important, because America's system of checks and balances could face a tough test. The Constitution's framers separated our government's powers to prevent the abuse of governmental powers exercised by kings and would-be tyrants, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. The framers, tutored by such political theorists of their time as Baron de Montesquieu, concluded that the best way to check the abuse of governmental power was to divvy it up among different, sometimes competing, branches of government. Hence, the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our federal government.
It has worked well, except when an issue falls into that in-between gray area, when opposing branches stubbornly claim jurisdiction. Such as with war powers. The Constitution explicitly gives the president the exclusive power to command the armed forces, meaning he gets to decide how they are used. The Constitution gives Congress the explicit power to declare war, and to raise and support armies.
But does it give Congress the power to undeclare a war? Can it tell the president to roll it all up and send everyone home? Anti-war lawmakers say it can, because only Congress can appropriate the money that the president spends, whether it is on a war or a memorial to the late bandleader Lawrence Welk. Without money to, say, buy ammo, the Army would have no choice but to pack up and fly home. Or stay with empty rifles and be slaughtered. One might say that no congressman in his right mind would want to leave the president with that sort of choice.
On the other hand, Congress can appropriate money for, say, sending the troops "over the horizon" to Kuwait, but the chief executive can defy Congress (beyond using his veto) by simply refusing to deploy the troops.
This could be a fine mess, precisely the kind of dispute that the Supreme Court often wants to avoid. So what to do? Congress can't raise its own army to "force" the president to do what it wants. The president can't send a tank or two over to Capitol Hill to make Congress do what he wants.
So, it comes back to doing what is reasonable and wise. And if you want a case in which it was unreasonable and unwise for Congress to conduct a war and, in effect, make foreign policy (another of the president's explicit powers), check out how the Vietnam War ended. Officially, the Paris Peace Accords, negotiated by the chief executive, ended it, but the war between the North and the South continued with our chiseled-in-stone promise to reply with "severe retaliatory action" if the North ever violated the treaty.
Which the North did by expanding its military force in the South. President Gerald Ford confessed he could do nothing about it because Congress had passed the Case-Church Amendment that forbade any more U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. All Ford could do was respond with diplomatic protests, which further emboldened the North and demoralized the South. When Congress subsequently withdrew its financial aid for the South, the end came. It was a North Vietnamese tank that broke down the gates to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, not a pajama-clad Viet Cong. Thanks to Congress, we lost an ally and the North imposed a brutal and deadly regime on the South.
Notwithstanding the Constitution, it has been a long-held belief and practice that the conduct of wars and foreign policy belong to the president.
That's for a reason. Because while the president might or might not bungle how he uses those powers, it is nearly certain that Congress will.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune
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