The current issue of The National Interest contains a perceptive essay by former Senator Jim Webb, “Congressional Abdication.” George F. Will echoes Webb’s arguments at The Washington Post, in “A bipartisan abdication.”
So, some abdication has occurred. Of what?
A congressional role in making U.S. foreign policy:
When it comes to the long-term commitments that our country makes in the international arena, ours can be a complicated and sometimes frustrating process. But our Founding Fathers deliberately placed checks and counterchecks into our constitutional system for exactly that purpose. The congressional “nuisance factor” is supposed to act as a valuable tool to ensure that our leaders — and especially our commander in chief — do not succumb to the emotions of the moment or the persuasions of a very few.
The problem, Webb argues, is that Congress has given up most of its power and authority, just letting presidents George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama do pretty much whatever they want. And recently it’s gotten much worse. “President Obama has arguably established the authority of the president to intervene militarily virtually anywhere without the consent or the approval of Congress,” writes Webb, “at his own discretion and for as long as he wishes.”
Will summarizes the problem thusly: “Imperial presidents and invertebrate legislators of both parties have produced what Webb correctly calls ‘a breakdown of our constitutional process.’ Syria may be the next such bipartisan episode” of undeclared war . . . where the Congress merely sits on its hands and waits for the CNN reports.
The imperial nature of our system has been a long time emerging. As with ancient Rome, Big Men usurped power, and legislative bodies ceded authority, step by step, over time — becoming less republican.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Imperator Obama”
AMEN.WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO JULIUS>
As the Congress cedes more and more of its authority to instead doing little but collecting a check and squabling over things that play well for election emotion, it will create an even greater disaffection on the part of the populace. Only a short step from there to where the feral government will NEED those urban warfare skills that that they are having the DHS practice.
You err in comparing Barry Buraq Hussayn Ubama-Soetoro to an imperial Roman.
Try any one of these:
Samuel Doe;
Charles Taylor;
Mobutu Sese Seko;
Jomo Kenyatta and/or;
Omar Bongo.
For Sayyid Barry Buraq Hussayn bin Buraq Hussayn bin Hussayn Ubama-Soetoro is but an African “big man.”
Sharing only the ignorance and the arrogance of a Missus and Mr Billy-Bubbah Blythe “Cli’ton” and like that lot living the life of a Nicolae and/or Elena Ceauşescu and similarly surrounded by and converting Billions of looted Dollars to legions of his as-corrupt — Buraq Hussayn is as far out of his continent as he is out of his era.
And out of his depth.
Could this “imperial president” that we have seen in both Bush and Obabam be the result of the 1970’s handy work of Chenny and Rumsfeld and their continuity of government? Did they finally got into effect during the Bush years?