David M. Shribman
The Ford Edsel. New Coke. The Sony Betamax. Theranos. Google Glass. Yugoslavia. The 1964 Philadelphia Phillies. The “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” musical. The War Powers Act.
Of the many great ideas that turned into colossal duds, the War Powers Act may be the champion. Conceived in idealism, tested by realism, it represents a huge failure of a brave idea — largely because American presidents have grown so powerful and so independent that whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, they have no respect for a measure lawfully passed by Congress and congruent with the founders’ conceptions of the separation and balance of powers.
If you doubt it, look at the missile-and-bomb barrage of Iran. It’s the greatest understatement in this age of overstatement to say that Donald Trump gave no thought whatsoever — not even a mere MAGA nanosecond — to the War Powers Act.
There’s enough blame, like so much in American politics, to go around.
There is, of course, a good reason, besides his broad conception of executive power, why Trump might not have sought advance congressional approval for his action, or at least consulted with members of both parties on Capitol Hill. Whether you approve of the Midnight Hammer attack as a justifiable, even indispensable, effort to prevent Iran from developing and then possessing a nuclear weapon, or whether you deplore the abandonment of negotiations and believe the entire operation was ill-advised even if well-executed, you must concede that it was born in stealth and was conducted in stealth. The whole point was surprise.
And though Trump prides himself on ignoring, even flouting, presidential precedent, in this case if no other, he has history on his side. Every president — the Democrats as well as the Republicans — since Congress voted the War Powers Act into law in 1973, over President Richard Nixon’s veto, has defied its intent and its practice.
The politics of presidents and the War Powers Act is best viewed through a vast mirror. When Republican presidents defy the act, Democrats howl. When Democratic presidents do so, Republicans bay at the moon. (An intriguing exception: George W. Bush, still reviled by both Republicans and Democrats for his use of military force in Iraq. He asked for such approval — and got it.)
This history is why House Speaker Mike Johnson was able to brush aside demands for a War Powers Act vote, arguing that Joe Biden had repeatedly used force in the Middle East and that Barack Obama bombed Libya for eight months, both without congressional approval.
Presidents of both parties clearly have been saying to their rivals in the opposite party: What are you going to do about it?
The answer: Nothing.
Even so, given that Trump indicated publicly that military force was possible against Iran, he could have asked for broad, non-specific congressional support for his actions that wouldn’t have compromised the details of the operation. But he’s not in the habit of following the wisdom of Bush.
Reps. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, and Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, introduced a resolution days before Trump sent the B-2 aircrafts aloft and ordered the Tomahawk cruise missiles readied for battle. It would have forced the president to “terminate the use” of American military personnel in Iran without congressional authorization.
Of course, Trump has dismissed Massie, who has represented a district splashed on the banks of the Ohio River since 2012, as “not MAGA,” perhaps because of the lawmaker’s original sin: winning a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and a master’s in mechanical engineering from that den of intellectual iniquity and known hellscape of anti-American thought, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said of Massie, who likely faces a Trump-supported primary challenge, that “MAGA doesn’t want him, doesn’t know him, and doesn’t respect him.”
Massie’s view: “When two countries are bombing each other daily in a hot war, and a third country joins the bombing, that’s an act of war. I’m amazed at the mental gymnastics being undertaken by neocons in D.C. (and their social media bots) to say we aren’t at war … so they can make war.”
For his part, Khanna, a radical moderate thought to be among the most thoughtful members of today’s Democratic Party, took issue with Trump’s comments about regime change in Iran, saying the president was “joking around about regime change” and adding, “That is not funny.”
I engaged in an email exchange with Khanna on Sunday night, and he told me that Congress needed to explore the consequences of the Iran attack; to ask if the action would increase the security of the United States or put American troops in danger; and to explore whether it might prompt Tehran to accelerate its rush to produce a nuclear weapon.
The next day, Johnson said, “I don’t think this is an appropriate time for a War Powers Resolution [vote], and I don’t think it’s necessary. For 80 years, presidents of both parties have acted with the same commander in chief authority under Article II [of the Constitution].”
The speaker’s big error wasn’t his politics. It’s his math.
He should have said 75 years, which would place the argument in 1950, when Harry Truman, a Democrat, described American involvement in Korea not as a “war” but, instead, as a “police action.” Wars require congressional approval. Police actions don’t. That’s why John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Nixon could conduct the Vietnam conflict without a congressional declaration of war. So, too, George H.W. Bush in Iraq, and the military operations ordered by the presidents who followed.
Here’s the problem: the collision between the War Powers Act, which requires congressional involvement unless the country is under attack (which it wasn’t last week), and the Constitution, which clearly allocates to Congress the power to declare war but also asserts that the president is the commander in chief.
But don’t expect the Democrats to file legal action against the president — and if they do, they may regret it.
The War Powers Act has never been fully tested before the Supreme Court. If the Democrats toss that political grenade across Capitol Hill to the high court, they can expect the current jurists to side with the president — or to finesse the matter sufficiently that the Democrats’ next president can act without congressional authority as well. Then watch for the Republicans to call for a vote on the War Powers Act. It’s inevitable.
David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
