Throughout the first year of U.S. President Donald Trump's second term in the White House and through nearly two months into the second year, the President has moved nearly without restraint.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
This week’s Capitol Hill votes affirming the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s war in Iran may have buttressed the President’s authority to extend executive prerogatives to declare war. But they also underlined the fragility of his grip on power in Washington.
Mr. Trump prevailed in the Senate on Wednesday, which failed by a 47-to-53 margin to move toward restricting his power to undertake military action. The vote in the House of Representatives Thursday supporting his conduct in the war on Iran was 219 to 212.
Together the twin votes were less a demonstration of the power of Mr. Trump’s sway in American politics than a vivid display of the potential limits on it. The Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are slim, the midterm congressional elections are eight months away, and polls suggest a decisive shift away from the GOP. The loss of Republican control in either house likely would severely restrict the range and extent of Mr. Trump’s power − and would deliver to Democrats subpoena power they could use to torment administration officials and, in unlikely extreme cases, remove them.
This year, the respected RealClearPolitics generic congressional vote average gives the Democrats a 4.4-per-cent point advantage over Republicans in the November elections.
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted to block a bipartisan resolution that sought to limit President Donald Trump’s military campaign against Iran, shutting down an effort by lawmakers who say Congress should have the final word on whether the country goes to war.
Reuters
Thursday’s narrow defeat of a House resolution directing Mr. Trump to “remove United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran” demonstrated how a Democratic wave in November could change the dynamics of Washington politics, creating what could amount to a veto on the President’s legislative programs.
One of the GOP defectors was Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio, who argued in floor debate that “the moral hazard posed by a government no longer constrained by our Constitution is a grave threat.”
There are signs this spring of the fundamentals of a voter revolt against the Republicans. Some of it is fallout from the attack on Iran, what the Pentagon has called Operation Epic Fury. Average American gasoline prices Thursday were US$3.251, up from US$2.983 only a week ago.
The rise in 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds above 4 per cent that followed the beginning of hostilities threatens businesses and individuals with higher borrowing costs. The RealClearPolitics average showed that, by a margin of 48.6 per cent to 43 per cent, Americans disapproved of the war in Iran. Additional American deaths and the prospect of a lengthy conflict could push those margins wider.
Throughout the first year of Mr. Trump’s second term in the White House and through nearly two months into the second year, the President has moved nearly without restraint.
He has seized power that, for generations under both Republican and Democratic presidents and with both Republican and Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill, was the unchallenged purview of Congress. He has fired federal workers and officials who, until last January, felt they had lifetime tenure (plus generous retirement benefits). He has virtually eliminated government departments and agencies in defiance of tradition and, in some cases, the law.
Only the courts have curtailed his initiatives, sometimes tentatively, sometimes partially, and only once − in his imposition of punishing tariffs that spurred a global trade war − did the Supreme Court strike down a major part of his program.
Soon the voters will have their say, and they may call a halt to perhaps the most comprehensive overhaul of the architecture of American politics in history − in ways more dramatic, though possibly not as enduring, as those under Franklin Roosevelt, whose Depression-era presidency created a vast new role for government.
Gary Mason: The West’s delicate, troubling dance with Trump on Iran
FDR’s New Deal, which began in 1933, in effect was confirmed by voters in the 1934 midterm elections. That year, in defiance of historical trends that usually see the party controlling the White House losing seats in the first tests after taking office, the Democrats gained nine seats in both the House and Senate, giving the party supermajorities in both chambers. The power of the 32nd president was impeded only by a bloc of Southern conservatives whose ardent support for racial segregation and deep skepticism of big-government programs provided only an occasional brake on executive prerogatives until the Supreme Court erected some barriers.
One caveat: This week’s party primaries in Texas and North Carolina − two states often considered on the verge of turning from Republican to Democrat but never quite doing so − suggested the presence of an anti-incumbent impulse among voters.
Four of Tuesday’s primaries in Texas warrant special attention. Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw was defeated by a challenger who questioned the four-term incumbent’s fealty to Mr. Trump. Republican Senator John Cornyn failed to win a majority and thus was forced into a May runoff against state Attorney-General Ken Paxton, the fate shared by Democratic Representative Al Green. Republican Representative Tony Gonzalez may not survive in office long enough for his runoff; he has been accused of having an affair with a staffer who committed suicide by setting herself on fire.
In North Carolina, three Democratic members of the state legislature lost primaries.
Trump says he will endorse a candidate soon in Texas Senate runoff between Paxton and Cornyn
Mr. Trump’s earlier foreign policy adventures were brief, successful and involved few casualties.
Despite the widespread destruction American forces have created in Iran, the combat there, and perhaps across the Middle East, will be more difficult and has already lasted longer and cost more lives than the earlier operations, which included the first assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and a series of small interventions involving alleged drug couriers in the Caribbean and suspected terrorists in Yemen and Africa.
A long, expensive, ugly engagement could erode the President’s domestic support and endanger more of his Republican allies.
“We are confusing the ability to destroy with the ability to achieve political outcomes,” said Farah Jan, a University of Pennsylvania expert on Middle Eastern security politics.
“The strikes have degraded Iran’s air defences and nuclear infrastructure, but degradation is not capitulation, and regime change from the air has never worked anywhere. The harder question − who governs Iran after this, and on what terms? − is the one no one in Washington appears to be asking."