There has never been a president that has treated the Congress with such disdain as has President Barack Obama. After Senators Bob Corker and Ben Cardin struck a bipartisan compromise to allow Congress to weigh in on the Iran deal, Obama refused to abide by it. He took the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to the United Nations before Congress had a chance to review it, and he continues to refuse to supply all the side agreements as required by the Corker-Cardin legislation.
Obama has also leaned on Executive Orders. While the sheer numbers issued are nowhere near those of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, or Woodrow Wilson, he has used executive orders or threatened to use them in far more expansive ways than his predecessors, and as a means to push an agenda without risking its dilution through the democratic process. His use of an executive order to defer deportation for five million illegal immigrants is just the latest example of Obama’s leadership philosophy. Harvard Law graduate Joel Pollak detailed how Obama’s use of Executive Orders differs from that of his predecessors:
There are three basic ways in which Obama’s behavior exceeds that of any his predecessors.
The first is that Obama is using executive orders and actions to alter his own legislation. It’s one thing to claim that you are forced to act because Congress will not. It’s quite another thing to re-write the law after Congress has done what you asked – and after you have offered, time and time again, to entertain formal amendments to the legislation. Obama has simply invoked executive authority to cover up his own errors. That’s unprecedented.
The second way in which Obama’s abuse of executive power is different is that he has done it to prevent the legislature from acting. It is now widely acknowledged that the president issued his “Dream Act by fiat” in 2012 not just because Congress wouldn’t pass his version of immigration reform, but to outflank Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who was preparing his own version, embarrassing Obama among Latino voters. Such pettiness is rare.
The third way in which Obama’s behavior is unusual is that he commands sweeping executive power on some issues while arguing, on other issues, that he has no power to act.
While partisans on both sides of the aisle may be frustrated with Washington and Congress’ poll numbers may hover at historic lows, the anecdote to gridlock is to oust incumbents, not bypass the institution entirely and rule as an imperial president.
The disdain among the Executive branch for the Legislative branch goes deeper. Whatever the merits of the Benghazi investigation — the cover-up is likely worse than the decision-making during the crisis — the White House and State Department have not only stonewalled the investigation, but actively sought to provoke and antagonize congressmen, hence the State Department’s decision to release articles about Richard Gere to the committee while holding back relevant documents. That signals not political disagreement, but rather personal and institutional contempt.
The issue isn’t just partisan; it’s also personal. Obama seeks not only victory, but also humiliation. He pilloried Senator Chuck Schumer for having the temerity to vote his conscience on the Iran deal, unleashing a torrent of hate — most admittedly by proxy — that even called into question Schumer’s loyalties, a strange tactic for a man whose own citizenship has long been unfairly questioned by conspiracy theorists. His personal rudeness to members of the legislative branch is unprecedented, not only as president but also during his short time as senator.
Obama is now in the final 500 days of his presidency. He faces no additional election; today’s Congress is largely the Congress with which he will end his presidency. He has already won his key piece of domestic legislation — the Affordable Care Act, aka “ObamaCare” — and a key foreign policy goaln— a nuclear deal with Iran. Both were achieved not with compromise, but rather with a partisan scorched earth campaign and irregular if not questionable political maneuvering. But, Obama has made clear that his seeks to be a transformative presidency, and he’s only achieved the tip of the iceberg as to what he hopes.
So what will Obama do next? He has made clear that he plans to alter U.S. policy toward climate change and is willing to bypass Congress to do it, both in terms of domestic policy and with regard to reaching agreements with foreign powers. But, that’s only one item on his legacy agenda. Palestinian statehood is another. As Obama continues a policy shaped by ideology rather than reality in the Middle East, he may very well try to impose Palestinian independence on the region rather than see it peacefully negotiated. Certainly, many European and Muslim majority states would support such action, and Obama has long substituted principle for affirmation. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he may also believe that an independent Palestinian state is the key to peace in the region. Obama knew little about the Middle East before taking office. Palestinian-American academic and former PLO activist Rashid Khalidi reportedly shaped his worldview. Prior to running for president, he reportedly gave a speech — the video from which The Los Angeles Times suppressed — with regard to the issue in which he presumably embraced Khalidi and Edward Said’s view of the conflict.
Indeed, there is little doubt about where Obama stands. Upon entering office, Obama make Israeli-Palestinian peace a priority but, by shredding previous White House commitments and insisting on a freeze on natural growth within disputed areas of Jerusalem, he gave Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas an excuse to walk away from talks. In effect, Obama acted more as Jerusalem’s municipal zoning commissioner than as leader of the free world. In the years since, he has become positively petulant if not unhinged toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. There was the “hot-mic” incident and the over-the-top reaction to Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. (Democratic complaints that Netanyahu lobbied Congress hold little water, as the British, French, and German ambassadors did as well; complaints that Netanyahu should not have criticized White House policy while in the United States are hypocritical as well, given that Obama criticized the sitting Australian government’s climate policy while in Australia). New reports suggest Obama brushed off Senate Minority leader Harry Reid’s request that he give members of his own party assurances that he would support Israel at the United Nations, and Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s decision to miss Netanyahu’s UN speech was simply rude (as was their underlings’ refusal to applaud). If Obama acted so unpresidential and petulant before, how might he act when he no longer has to worry about how unilateral action might impact other agendas back home? Perhaps it’s time to recognize the real possibility that Obama will support any UN Security Council binding initiative to recognize a Palestinian state and impose borders. Power, after all, had once recommended doing just that and then utilizing U.S. troops to make it a reality.
The question now is less whether Obama might try to create such a state as a fait accompli and allow others to pick up the pieces, and more what the U.S. Congress might do to dissuade Obama from doing so. Rhetoric alone will not do the trick. It is clear that Obama does not respect Congress, nor care about its input. Frankly, the Congress has neither given the White House nor the State Department reason to respect it.
Now is the time for Congress to lay out consequences for any unilateral action: Freezing confirmations, slashing funding, forbidding any aid and assistance to any Palestinian entity until it reaffirms Oslo, and constraining the State Department’s worst instincts to relieve Palestinians of accountability, as it did with the PLO Commitments Compliance Act in the late 1980s. Diplomats might whine, but their recent performance as well as the disdain Kerry’s crew has shown for Congress suggests that the U.S. would suffer little from constraining State Department functions. The alternative is not only the creation of a new state that refuses to recognize its neighbor, but one which would quickly become a satellite of Iran, a sponsor of terrorism, and guarantee a devastating war rather than usher in any peace.
