I had the honor Tuesday of attending the Congressional Dialogue series at the Library of Congress, a dinner exclusively for members of Congress and limited guests.
Speaking to an audience of a couple of hundred, Emmy award-winning historian Michael Beschloss addressed the subject of “presidents of war,” which is also the title of a book he released last year. With interviewer David Rubenstein, Beschloss went through virtually the entire history of U.S. wars and how they were handled under various presidents, with a particular emphasis on the 20th and 21st centuries.
Beschloss stressed during the beginning of his talk, and more than once throughout, that Congress hasn’t officially declared war, as it is constitutionally obligated to do, since World War II. He also stressed that it is vitally important that Congress take this obligation seriously and always insist on a formal declaration.
The audience applauded overwhelmingly when he said this. I was surprised.
Beschloss also noted that wars declared by Congress (World War II being a prime example) generally fared better than those undeclared (Vietnam, the 2003 Iraq invasion, the 17-year-long Afghanistan war) that were instead waged via presidential executive order.
The audience seemed eager to support these sentiments as well. I was flabbergasted.
Only in the last few months have bipartisan congressional majorities come together to buck the White House on war, specifically U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s ongoing military actions in Yemen.
In December, the Senate voted 56-41 to end U.S. military assistance to the Saudis. In February, the House did the same thing, reasserting its constitutional war powers 248-177.
Both votes reigned in presidential overreach in waging war.
Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., of the House Foreign Relations Committee, said the House vote last month represented “Congress reclaiming its role in foreign policy.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Vice News in December that the Senate vote “is historic because really it’s been a long time since Congress has stood up, grabbed their constitutional power and said to a president, ‘You can’t go to war without our permission.’ In fact, I can’t remember it really ever happening that Congress has done this.”
Despite the aberrant, though pleasing, recent Saudi-Yemen votes, it has been decades since Congress even signaled that it is serious about keeping the president in check when it comes to war. In the latter half of the last century, and almost the entirety of this one, Congress has simply let presidents of either party do whatever they please when it comes to foreign policy.
This is the opposite of what the Constitution intended, as Beschloss explained Tuesday evening.
The majority of Democrats in recent decades, many of whom had been outspoken against the Iraq War, nevertheless generally allowed former President George W. Bush to have his way on foreign policy. Predictably, they did the same for former President Barack Obama’s forays into Libya and Syria.
Most Republicans gave Bush a blank check regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, though conservatives would later push back against Obama on Libya and Syria, and reverse their position again under President Trump.
All of this was always more about partisan posturing by both parties than adhering to the Constitution. It took the unusual partisan shuffling of Trump’s presidency, combined with the unconscionable U.S.-backed horrors in Yemen, to inspire a congressional majority to take its constitutional duties seriously again.
“Extraordinary moment! For decades, Congress has relinquished power to the executive,” Paul tweeted in December. “Today the Senate sent a loud message: the declaration of war comes from Congress … ”
Extraordinary moment! For decades, Congress has relinquished power to the executive. Today the Senate sent a loud message: the declaration of war comes from Congress, & we don’t approve of our involvement in Yemen. Time to build here and stop bombing there! Today we took action!
— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 13, 2018
Was the applause by so many members of Congress Tuesday night a sign that the recent Saudi-Yemen vote was a new beginning when it comes to constitutionally declaring war?
We can hope. It’s been more than half a century since Congress has regularly asserted its proper war powers the way the Founding Fathers intended.
So forgive me if I was taken aback by their applause.
Jack Hunter (@jackhunter74) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the former political editor of Rare.us and co-authored the 2011 book The Tea Party Goes to Washington with Sen. Rand Paul.
