President Barack Obama addresses the situation in Syria on Saturday in the White House Rose Garden as Vice President Joseph Biden looks on. (Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images)
Essay
It began almost immediately on cable news networks after President Barack Obama turned from the podium in the White House’s Rose Garden. Obama had just announced, although he has decided military force is necessary in Syria, he first will seek congressional authorization.
As he and Vice President Joseph Biden head back inside the Oval Office, cable news pundits began their predictable, full-throated declarations that Obama “is taking a major/big/extreme/colossal/ginormous risk.”
He’s not. And here’s why: No one expects Congress to get this, or anything, right.
The American people aren’t thrilled with Obama’s job performance — but they’re disgusted with Congress’ handling of, well, everything.
To be sure, our friends at RealClearPolitics averaged several prominent polls that examined how well Americans believe Congress is doing its job. A whopping 76 percent of those polls disapprove of Congress’ job performance. Using a similar metric, RCP concluded Obama’s job disapproval number is 26 percentage points better.
Obama looks reasonable by holding off on sending tens of Raytheon-built Tomahawk missiles to pound Assad regime and military targets. If either or both chambers of Congress opts against coming back from a weeks-long recess a week early to debate and vote on a Syria use-of-force resolution, given those disapproval numbers, Obama is betting Americans will view lawmakers as unreasonable.
That’s doubly so because a large number of lawmakers from both parties and both chambers this week urged Obama to let Congress debate and vote before he green-lighted any military strikes. The president some have called too unwilling to engage in political warfare with Congress just called their collective bluff.
What’s more, this decision very well could allow Obama to play tiebreaker in chief. The GOP-controlled House has tried to block or de-fund just about everything Obama has pushed. And with over 70 percent of Americans skeptical about a Syrian strike, there’s plenty of reason to believe he will lose Democratic House members when the chamber finally votes on Syria.
But the Senate is a different animal. Behind its ornate desks sit more moderate members with constituents, typically, that span the political spectrum. That allows senators to take a broader view of complicated issues. In fact, when I spent a day back in March — before Assad had killed over 1,000 people and more than 400 children with chemical weapons – polling senators about a Syrian strike, I had a hard time finding one in opposition.
So it’s a safe bet — and one should expect Obama has pushed his chips toward the square labeled “United States Senate” — that the upper chamber will vote, even if in a narrow final tally, in favor of attacking Assad’s regime.
One chamber against. One chamber in favor. That’s a tie. Americans don’t do ties. It’s not in our national DNA.
On this matter, scholars have written for decades, the Constitution gives a president the authority to strike without congressional approval if he believes there is a threat to the United States. Which is why this part of his Saturday address is so important:
“This attack is an assault on human dignity. It also presents a serious danger to our national security.”
Obama is a Constitutional lawyer and scholar by training and trade. So he is fully aware that the Constitution, on matters of national security, gives the commander in chief broad powers. In other words, in the case of, say, a House-Senate split on launching a limited military operation, the president can argue the Founding Fathers gave him tie-breaking authority.
