Fascinating Stupidity

It appears that the Republican response to the Obama administration’s executive order on immigration started with an attempt to use Homeland Security funding as a lever to repeal those actions. The effort failed as polls pretty much told the GOP that the non-Republican American constituency (Dems and independents, which make up the vast majority of voters) would take any government agency shutdown as (a) a violation of election “no shutdown” pledges by the GOP leadership and (b) rather would completely place the blame for the shutdown solely on the Republicans. Worse as border security was clearly a national hot-button issue. Homeland Security got funded with no strings.

Plan B. If we do not like administration actions, usurp the normal prerogatives of the Executive Branch, continue to delay executive appointments, propose legislation to derail administrative decisions by Obama-dominated agencies (e.g., the F.C.C.) and/or defund activities approved by such agencies, create an entirely separate foreign policy administration that steps completely over the Department of State, National Security Agency and the President himself and sets an entirely new foreign policy administered by Congress to the exclusion of the Executive Branch of government. In short, take over the Executive Branch whenever it moves in any direction that the GOP doesn’t like. Marginalize the presidency. Kind of the opposite of the earlier GOP Cheney/Bush efforts to empower the presidency at the expense of Congress. Interesting.

First, GOP forces, let’s forget the President and the Department of State, capitalize on the tension between the Obama administration and the Israeli right wing Likud Party and its leader, Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. Let’s invite that prime minister to address Congress on the eve of an Israeli parliamentary election, where Bibi’s has not done so well in recent years, now forced into uncomfortable coalitions that moderate his traditional hard line. Let’s allow a foreign prime minister to use Congress in his campaign efforts and force his vision of U.S. policy choice on the United States with a special platform to the American people.

House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation for Bibi to speak before Congress generated an impassioned and articulate anti-Iran-nuclear-deal speech that was inspiring but devoid of any alternatives other than a rather clear ultimate path to military confrontation. Despite a decade of Iranian intransigence in the face of withering economic sanctions, Netanyahu simply told Congress that Iran was destined to cave and give the West (and Israel) total nuclear disarmament without a shred of evidence that Iran would ever move in that direction and mountains of evidence that they would not.

Second. Make damned sure that Iran’s religious leaders understand that the Obama Administration does not speak for the United States, that the control over treaties rested solely with the Republican Party that was usurping the negotiations post-haste. Forget the Constitution and the separation of powers. The ends justify the means even if it undermines the core structure of the American form of government. Congress, take over foreign policy. Oh, and ignore the fact that the United States is only one country in a six-nation coalition (U.S., U.K., France, Germany, China and Russia) negotiating with Iran or that their own Ronald Reagan negotiated his own “accord” with Iran in his first year as president. While formal treaties do need Senate approval, generally, the specifics of a treaty are presented before the Senate formulates its opinion. This time, the opinion was expressed in the absence of the specifics of the treaty that has yet to be finalized. Executive policies generally do not need such confirmation, but they have less weight and, as the GOP iterated in their letter (noted below), more subject to change in future years.

Oddly enough, the GOP was as much as interested in sabotaging the peace talks as were the super-Islamists, the most extreme anti-Israeli/anti-American hardline faction within Iran herself. “An already heated battle between the White House and Republicans over negotiations to curtail Iran’s nuclear program grew more tense [March 9^th] when 47 Republican senators sent a letter to Iran [specifically, the religious leaders who hover above and have a higher authority than the elected officials] designed to kill any potential deal… “educating” Iran’s leadership on the American “Constitutional” process.

“Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, quickly tweeted a statement to Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas [who organized the GOP Senatorial letter], with his [on behalf of Iran] response calling the letter a ‘propaganda ploy’ that lacked legal value.” New York Times, March 11^th.

“The White House responded by accusing the Republicans of conspiring with Iranian hard-liners, who oppose the delicate negotiations, and suggesting that their goal was to push the United States into a military conflict…. ‘I think it’s somewhat ironic to see some members of Congress wanting to make common cause with the hard-liners in Iran,’ President Obama said a few hours after the letter was made public. ‘It’s an unusual coalition.’” Washington Post, March 9^th. Outrage seemed to unify each American party against the other, exacerbating the great divide, stuff that is anything but new to our political scene.

Short-term battles that erode American Constitutional structures may seem like clever politics in this seeming death-struggle between a GOP-dominated Congress and a Democratic-controlled Executive branch, but the long-term consequences to the viability of the American government are at stake. If we survive this struggle, we can expect the Democratic and Republican roles to be reversed someday… and exactly how are the American people well-served by their elected representatives as their main focus is not good governance but in decimating any opposition to their perceived “mandate”? The old “hold my breath till I turn blue” syndrome.

All we are doing is proving to the rest of the world… and to ourselves… that our “model of modern democracy” no longer works. And it can get a whole lot worse before it gets better. But our form of government can work if both parties prioritize the nation as a whole above their doctrinaire minority perspectives.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I remember when as a young lad I first realized that just because someone is an “adult” does not mean that they have mastered maturity.