Back in the late 1970s, I was interviewing Sen. John Culver, an Iowa Democrat, for a book I was writing about the Senate. I asked him if foreign policy issues were handled differently in the Senate than domestic issues. He spoke first about the myriad interest groups that buzz like angry bees around domestic issues, especially those that involve the economy. Then he added, “But of course, in Washington, foreign policy is the big boys’ playpen.” He might have added that in that playpen, there is no bigger boy than the president of the United States.
Congress almost always approaches a foreign policy gun fight with a pocket knife. For one thing, Congress is a specialized institution where only a handful of members of Congress deal on a regular basis with international issues. This limited cast of characters would include the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the Foreign Operations subcommittees of the Appropriations Committees of both houses and, to a more limited degree, the two Armed Services Committees. On the Senate side where members have multiple major committee assignments, the attention of even those senators who are foreign policy specialists is often diverted to issues connected to their other committee assignments.
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Congress also lacks the sources of intelligence available to the president. The U.S. government now has 307 embassies and consulates across the world that house military and naval attaches, CIA station chiefs and representatives of other cabinet departments. These diplomatic neurons send thousands of messages each day to Washington. Most go to the State Department, but the National Security Council gets to see them and the NSC is located comfortably in the White House. Congress has nothing comparable.
The president can unilaterally recognize or withdraw recognition from another country. Had President Obama’s recent recognition of Cuba been put to a vote in Congress, it might well have failed to pass. Like his power to pardon, his discretion in diplomatic recognition is absolute.
If all of these sound like they add up a structural advantage that favors the presidency, it would be a correct calculation. And if you consider who comes out on top of the various showdowns between the president and Congress, the scorecard favors the president resoundingly: Carter got the Panama Canal Treaty, Reagan got the sale of the Airborne Warning and Control System to Saudi Arabia, Bush got the Iraq War resolution and Obama will surely get his nuclear deal with Iran. The list of presidential failures is not nearly as impressive although some, like Woodrow Wilson’s failure to secure American adherence to the League of Nations and Franklin Roosevelt’s retreat after his call to “Quarantine the Aggressors” in 1937 were notable setbacks. But they demonstrate that the structural advantage is sometimes not enough.
To be successful, presidents have to resort to the one defining power of their office to prevail even when the ground rules favor them: The power that presidential historian Richard Neustadt called “the power to persuade.” A disengaged or inflexible president can lose even with the deck stacked decisively in his favor. Obama will probably succeed with the Iran deal with the most vigorous lobbying and stroking of Congress since the passage of Obamacare despite his well-documented abhorrence of hobnobbing with senators and House members.
The great institutional powers of the presidency are necessary elements of success in foreign policy but by no means are they sufficient. Obama learned it when he got rolled on the problem of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against ISIS. The home field advantage may give the president the edge, but he can’t put the ball over the goal line without some well-rehearsed plays.
Ross K. Baker is distinguished professor of political science at Rutgers University. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
