Every time we celebrate a president who does things from The Gut, we get in some terrible trouble. The last guy celebrated how close to The Gut he actually operated, and we all know where that ended up…
…Barack Obama is not a man of The Gut, and it is driving official Washington crazy. This is a good thing, because resisting The Gut is what the Constitution is all about, especially in its war powers, which this president is conspicuously contemplative about exercising, at least in every context except launching drones.
It is a comforting — and comfortable — fiction to believe that the president’s decision to throw at least part of the decision to make war in Syria into the lap of the Congress is also a deft political move that will, in effect, exploit the “gap” between the hawkish wing of the Republican party and the isolationist wing thereof. I happen to believe that much of the congressional resistance to what the president wants will come because this particular president wants it. I also happen to believe that if the vote goes sour for him in the House, and the president lets the missiles fly anyway, you will see many motions for his impeachment set aloft simultaneously. I don’t know what it will take to get the country’s punditocracy to realize the simple truth that even crazoid vandals believe what they say, and will do what they say they will do…Hence, when the president announced that he was bringing Congress in on the decision to make war in Syria, a very loud howl arose from the Gut crowd that obeying even that most minimal of constitutional niceties — and I say “niceties” because the Constitution requires that the power to make war in all cases resides in the Congress — weakened not only his office, but also the country itself, as though the United States had lost some kind of military advantage because its president is less free to act than Bashar al-Assad…
…This is of a piece with his entire presidency, another example of his stubborn — and endlessly futile — belief that there is an opposition with whom he can bargain in anything resembling good faith. It just so happens that, in this instance, seeking congressional approval also conforms more closely to the Constitution than would his simply launching Tomahawks into Syria on his own. The capital responded in many cases as though the president had abdicated his fundamental responsibilities rather than fulfilled them, which he did, at least in part, and in a perfect demonstration of his conception of the office. The Gut is left behind in the green room, shouting its impotence at John McCain. Meanwhile, policy, or something like it, gets made.
The address this evening will be most interesting, indeed.
