A history lesson

Walter Russell Mead and Nicholas M. Gallagher with a useful reminder:

The classic case of a Congress voting to override a presidential assurance to a foreign leader came in 1975. When President Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords with North Vietnam in 1972, the spirit and letter of the agreement guaranteed South Vietnam’s independence; what’s more, President Nixon promised Nguyen Van Thieu, President of South Vietnam at the time, that the United States would come to the South’s rescue if the North broke the agreement and attacked. But the PPA was not a treaty, and the Senate did not ratify it. Nixon was later forced to resign because of his role in the Watergate scandal, and in early 1975 North Vietnam attacked the South. President Ford, seeking to honor both the spirit of President Nixon’s signature to the Paris Peace Accords and his promise to Thieu, asked Congress for money for military aid for South Vietnam.

With overwhelming Democratic support, Congress refused to provide aid and South Vietnam went down the tubes. As the embittered Thieu said in a final address as his country collapsed, “At the time of the peace agreement the United States agreed to replace equipment on a one-by-one basis. But the United States did not keep its word. Is an American’s word reliable these days? The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom and it was in the same fight that the United States lost 50,000 of its young men.”

If the President of the United States wishes to negotiate a treaty, he'd better get the support of the Senate. You might recall that Bill Clinton signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, but he never submitted that treaty to the Senate for approval, because he knew he'd get hooted down. Presidents would like to bind their successors, but they can't.

On the matter of Iran, this president, at this time, doesn't have the support of the Senate. I'm not entirely convinced that the letter Tom Cotton and the other senators sent to Iran was a wise move, but it's absurd to claim it was outrageous, to say nothing of treasonous. Back to Mead and Gallagher:

The Constitutional problem therefore isn’t that Congress is trying to micromanage the President; the problem is that the President is trying an end run around Congress on a matter of the greatest importance. President Obama has the right to conduct whatever policy he wishes towards Iran as long as he stays within the bounds of American law; he cannot, however, bind future Presidents and Congresses unless the legislative branch weighs in. Writing a letter to the Supreme Leader of Iran might not have been the best or the most tactful way to make the point, but Senators have an obligation to their institution and to the Constitution to uphold their right to review long term international commitments made in America’s name.

We have a Congress for a reason.