It’s really simple.
… .. As opinion turns more decisively against the war, the administration
is becoming ever more dismissive of Congress’s role. Last week, Under
Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman brusquely turned away Senator Hillary Clinton’s
questions about how the Pentagon intended to plan for withdrawal from Iraq.
"Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from
Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies
in Iraq,” he wrote. Mr. Edelman’s response showed contempt not
merely for Congress, but for the system of government the founders carefully
created.The Constitution cannot enforce itself. It is, as the constitutional scholar
Edwin Corwin famously observed, an “invitation to struggle” among
the branches, but the founders wisely bequeathed to Congress some powerful
tools for engaging in the struggle. It is no surprise that the current debate
over a deeply unpopular war is arising in the context of a Congressional spending
bill. That is precisely what the founders intended.Members of Congress should not be intimidated into thinking that they are
overstepping their constitutional bounds. If the founders were looking on
now, it is not Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who would strike them as out of
line, but George W. Bush, who would seem less like a president than a king.Just
What the Founders Feared: An Imperial President Goes to War
by Adam Cohen
The remedy is too. But finding legislators with the courage to confront Mr.
Bush may be a bit more difficult.
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