With the help of some readers, the motivation for Obama bypassing Congress is a little more clear. There’s no doubt this is a power-grab; an expansion of Presidential powers. But, since the PR seems to be backfiring with Obama being attacked from both the left and right, the only way this makes sense is if Obama’s handlers convinced him to take this particular hit for the team.
Following this logic, Obama needed to be convinced that the PR backlash is less bad than if he had gone to Congress first. The answer is: his base. The lefties who were at anti-war protests during the Bush years, but are now absent, and their fellow-travelers might wake-up if this were officially a War, and not a “kinetic military action.” What would make this a War? Why, a Declaration of War from Congress. So the faux-anti-war Democrats (and the Nobel Peace Prize committee) can continue to pretend that war is peace and Obama is a pacifist: “There is no war. There is only a peace-keeping mission. There is no war. There is only a peace-keeping mission…”
Obama’s base will re-elect him, and he will enjoy the benefits of the unitary executive with unlimited war powers for another term. Who knows, maybe he can get Congress to roll-over on that pesky term-limit thing, and be a benevolent dictator for life!
9:57 am on March 31, 2011
