That Horse Has Long Since Left the Barn

Five years after President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, the Old Cranky Lady solicited contributions from some prominent figures in the conflict and other foreign policy experts. This offering from Army General Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) caught my eye.

"My greatest surprise was the failure on the part of Congress to assert itself before the executive branch. That failure assured continued problems for the military in the face of a secretary of defense who proved incompetent at fighting war."

Truly, sir?

This belief is reachable only through an utter ignorance of the last ninety-odd years of US presidential leadership. Yes, the US Congress is afforded by the US Constitution the sole power to take the nation to war--on paper. Reality, ever since Woodrow Wilson's epochal 1917 speech, has read far differently. In short, Grover Cleveland is gone, and his successors rarely run for the presidency anymore and almost never win it.

For all the notoriety of Theodore Roosevelt as America's first modern president, President Wilson dramatically altered the relationship between Capitol Hill and the White House. We had seen William McKinley and TR return Hamilton's "energy" to the Executive, but neither of them ended the long tradition of merely sending a State of the Union to Congress in writing. President Wilson did. Ostensibly, the president clamored for the support of Congress to officially sanction war with Imperial Germany and its allies, but his intimidating presence left no doubt as to his intentions. The result was a fait accompli.

Arguably, no political speech of the 20th Century was more influential, and Franklin Roosevelt, Wilson's old Secretary of the Navy, continued his work following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Circumstances differed here, and again the Congress was called upon to legitimize the chief executive's will, but, unmistakably, power over war shifted further and further to the Executive Branch.

As many well know, the US Congress has NEVER declared a formal war in the succeeding years, despite prolonged American conflict in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq, merely to name three of the longer ones. More signficantly, at no time has a US President felt compelled to formally address the national legislature to ask for a declaration of war. President Bush, for example, delivered his "Forty-Eight Hours" speech from the White House, not the US Capitol.

The point is clear: find me a president since 1917 denied a war. If the president wishes it, we are going to war. Even if President Bush ordered an aerial bombardment of Natanz, it is far from clear that even a Pelosi-led Congress could stop him. A majority of the Framers did not want the power to go to war left up to one man, yet that is precisely where we find ourselves today.

The rest of the article is as follows:

"Had Congress defended the welfare of our armed forces by challenging the concentration of power in the hands of the president, the vice president and the secretary of defense, our Army and Marine Corps would not be in the difficult position we find them in today.

The Republican-dominated Congress failed us by refusing to hold the necessary hearings and investigations the Army desperately needed. Without hearings, the Army could not advance its case for increasing the number of troops and rearming the force. The result is an Army and Marine Corps on the ropes, acres and acres of broken equipment, and tour lengths of 15 months because we have too few troops for the tasks at hand."

"Challenging the concentration of power" is an almost impossible task for any Congress--even after the 1973 War Powers legislation--let alone one controlled by the same party as the one in the White House. Simply put, this is a weakness of our system, precious little incentive exists for the Congress to "hold the necessary hearings and investigations" when the president is one of them. It may pain us to admit it, but Richard Nixon, irrespective of all his crimes, would have finished his second term if the Republicans had controlled Congress. They simply would not have cared enough about a "rumored" political act of malfeasance, additionally, they would have wanted to avoid looking for fear of they might find. Impeachment proceedings and censures are not supposed to be partisan affairs, yet, inevitably, that is precisely what they are.

A Republican Senate in 1987 does not hold Iran-Contra hearings, just as Democratic one in 1998 does not consider impeaching Bill Clinton. Conversely, Democrats allowed Lyndon Johnson to dictate the terms of the Vietnam debate after the Gulf of Tonkin and Republicans, aside from one or two, never questioned President Bush on Iraq until very nearly the end of the majority.

Because the president is also the de facto leader of one of the major parties, a Congress in similar hands fears that it will only weaken itself to haul their ideological ally's team up the street to answer for their actions. They have good reason to believe this is so. Case in point: Richard Nixon and the 1974 Elections. He is widely credited with having killed the Republicans on the November ballot, even though a) he resigned in August b)they hadn't had a Congressional majority in roughly two decades and c) Howard Baker and other GOP leaders stepped forward (eventually) to distance themselves from the dying Nixon regime.

George Washington never envisioned the president as a partisan, but we elect presidents through partisan means so we should not express surprise when the chief executive's supporters do not wish to seriously investigate their "own" White House.

Although Congress possesses more explicit power than any other branch (it could, in theory, remove every federal judge up to and including the Chief Justice, and remove every cabinet officer plus the elected presidential ticket; no other branch has such power), there are simply too many disparate agenda and political beliefs in a bicameral system with a combined 535 members. Aside from landmark victories, speakers and their allies generally follow the lead of presidents, and if they are from the same party, Capitol Hill is often prepared to follow them off a cliff, if unable to change their minds.