Speaker of the House John Boehner’s invitation for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress created a spirited debate among media conservatives who support the invite and those who don’t.
The arrangement, which was discreetly arranged by Boehner and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer, moved the White House to call it a breach in protocol, while Republicans maintain Boehner did nothing wrong. A Boehner aide said the speaker’s office has in the past reached out to the White House about such invitations only to receive no response.
Netanyahu is now scheduled to speak March 3 on Capitol Hill. He is expected to address Iran’s nuclear development program and possible U.S. sanctions on Iran, which the president has attempted to stall in order to continue negotiations with Tehran that have been repeated extended under Obama.
“Mr. Netanyahu is welcome to visit and speak to Americans anytime he wants, but Congress’s invitation … is a violation of diplomatic form, tradition and expectation,” wrote Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan.
“The United States has an elected president who serves a four-year term, and in that time he gets to conduct the nation’s formal diplomatic efforts and policy and to oversee its foreign-affairs apparatus and agencies.”
Speaking on Fox News, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said Obama is at fault for threatening to veto any congressionally-approved sanctions against Iran, but he called the Netanyahu invitation “a mistake” by Hill Republicans.
“[Obama] has ignored the law many times before, so they are looking for an avenue,” Krauthammer said. “I’m not sure [the invite] was the best avenue.”
Similarly, David Brooks of the New York Times said it’s “unwise” for Republicans to take what he called a “confrontational” approach with Obama, in regards to Israel.
“[I]nviting somebody from overseas to give a speech against the president from the well of the Congress is confrontational and I think unwise, I just think unwise, on two grounds,” he said on the “PBS NewsHour.”
“First, the president, the country has to speak with a single voice. The gestures of that voice really reside in the White House. And there should be some deference to the executive branch on foreign policy. Second, I just think it’s bad for Bibi Netanyahu to do this. It’s just not a good idea to pick a fight with the president of the United States.”
Media conservatives who supported the Netanyahu invitation said Obama was being excessively defensive.
“The speaker shouldn’t have to wait for White House sign-off for his invitations to address the House any more than the White House should coordinate with him whom it invites into the Oval Office,” wrote Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review. “The invitation kerfuffle is all the more ridiculous because it involves a friend of the United States.”
George Will, a columnist for the Washington Post, said on Fox News that Obama was guilty of bad etiquette. “Israel lives in a tough neighborhood,” he said. “[In] 726 days, the president will be gone; [Israelis] will still live in a tough neighborhood. And they’re not going to worry about showing manners to this man [Obama] who has such bad manners.”
Echoed Will’s Post colleague Jennifer Rubin, a Republican blogger: “The complaint from the White House is so disproportionate to the issue and so defensive (is the president so petrified that Congress might hear a compelling speech from the United States’ best ally in the Middle East?) that one wonders what it is up to.”
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol did not weigh in on the propriety of Boehner’s invite. Instead, he characterized Obama’s reaction — made clear by an anonymous administration official who expressed his displeasure in the New York Times — as symptomatic of a frustrated and defeated president.
“It is Obama’s failures that explain his anger — his failures, and his hopes that a breakthrough with Iran could erase the memories of failure and appear to vindicate his foreign policy,” wrote Kristol. “Israel stands in the way, he thinks, of this breakthrough. Prime Minister Netanyahu stands in the way. And so Obama lashes out. It’s of course unseemly.”
Meanwhile, liberal columnists in national papers have largely remained mute on the issue. Some in the Washington Post, however, have taken Obama’s side.
Post columnist Richard Cohen took issue with Netanyahu’s acceptance of Boehner’s invite.
“What concerns me most is how Netanyahu threatens to harm the bipartisan understanding and support of Israel,” wrote Cohen. “The prime minister has never been able to hide his disdain for Obama.”
Dana Milbank of the Post said the Boehner invite provoked an “international incident.”
And their colleague Eugene Robinson: “[I]nviting a foreign leader to speak at the Capitol without even informing the president, let alone consulting him, is a bald-faced usurpation for which there is no recent precedent.”
Obama won’t be meeting with Netanyahu during his U.S. visit. The official reason given for not scheduling an Oval Office talk is not wanting to appear to take sides in the Israeli election that follows later in March.
Earlier today, Dermer told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that “the prime minister’s visit to Washington is intended for one purpose — to speak about Iran, that openly threatens the survival of the Jewish state. The survival of Israel is not a partisan issue. It is an issue for all Americans because those who seek Israel’s destruction also threaten America.”
