The Democrats’ War Powers Gambit

The hostilities may be on hold in Iran, but on Capitol Hill the fight to crimp the president’s war powers is only getting underway. “We need a permanent end to Donald Trump’s reckless war of choice,” avers the Democratic leader in the House, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries. “We must pass our War Powers Resolution to end this war for good,” vows Senator Charles Schumer. These demands lack constitutional legitimacy, but some Republicans are wavering, too.Mr. Jeffries and his colleagues insist that Speaker Mike Johnson “immediately reconvene the House back into session so we can move a war powers resolution that will end this conflict.” General Schumer derides Mr. Trump as a “military moron” and reckons America is “worse off today” than when the conflict began. His reckless talk suggests an attempt to substitute the martial judgment of Congress for the president’s.The interbranch tensions can be traced in part to the Framers’ design, in which war powers are divided. Congress has authority to declare wars along with power to fund and regulate the operations of the military. Yet the president has the power to command the military, and that authority implies the ability to exercise his or her judgment as to when national security warrants a deployment of the armed forces — often on short notice.“The circumstances that endanger the safety of nations are infinite,” Hamilton wrote in 23 Federalist, “and for this reason no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed on the power to which the care of it is committed.” Hamilton, to be sure, envisioned legislators and presidents collaborating on this head in a spirit of “Energetic Government.” In times of peril, though, like, say, that from Iran, the president can take the lead with alacrity.All the more infuriating, then, to see some Republicans in Congress following the Democrats’ lead and second-guessing the commander in chief’s judgment in the war against Iran. Feature, say, Senator John Curtis of Utah. He’s calling for a 60-day cap on Mr. Trump’s campaign, pointing to the War Powers Resolution of 1973. That law gives presidents power “to respond to emerging threats — for a limited period of time,” Mr. Curtis says.The Beehive State solon adds that in his view “60 days is a fully sufficient window for presidents to take emergency measures in response to a national threat,” at which point Congress can be asked “whether a state of war should in fact be declared and continued.” Congressman Don Bacon agrees. Where, though, does such a time limit appear in the Constitution? Such a cap, after all, would embolden America’s enemies to run down the clock in a war.Small wonder, then, that President Nixon rejected the War Powers Resolution’s limits on presidential warmaking authority, including its 60-day limit on military deployments. Congress then overrode his veto. Nixon’s veto message warned that the resolution sought “to take away, by a mere legislative act, authorities which the president has properly exercised under the Constitution for almost two hundred years.” He was as right as rain, and this issue has been percolating since Vietnam. The Framers, Nixon warned, had foreseen “the impossibility of foreseeing every contingency that might arise in this complex area.” The law, now being wielded by the Democrats against Mr. Trump, would, Nixon cautioned, “seriously undermine this nation’s ability to act decisively and convincingly in times of international crisis.” Which still suits the Democrats fine.

The Democrats’ War Powers Gambit

The Democrats’ War Powers Gambit

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