Well played, JB, Well Played

You may have heard that an invitation was sent this week for the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress in a special session.  This would not otherwise get anyone's attention, except for one little thing -- the invitation came not from Barack Obama, the president and ostensible deciderer of USA foreign policy, but from John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

In his public statement, Boehner noted that “Prime Minister Netanyahu is a great friend of our country, and this invitation carries with it our unwavering commitment to the security and well-being of his people.  In this time of challenge, I am asking the prime minister to address Congress on the grave threats radical Islam and Iran pose to our security and way of life.”

Boehner specifically invited Netanyahu to address the threat of Iran gaining nuclear weapons which, theoretically, could be used against Israel.  That's the Israel which, until this administration, was thought of as an ally of the USA.

That is a problem for the White House, since Obama is trying to negotiate one of those legacy-builders, a nuclear pact of some kind with the Iranians, one of those things his canonizers can point to when they try to explain that he was somehow not the biggest failure ever to occupy the Oval Office.

The White House is not happy.  Josh Earnest, the poor unfortunate press secretary there who has to try to defend Obama from, well, the pesky facts, called it a "breach of protocol." It is, of course, clearly in the purview of the State Department and the rest of the Executive Branch to decide when foreign leaders whom Barack Obama hates should address Congress.

Oh, yeah, did I mention that Obama hates Netanyahu, has called him offensive names and wishes that Israel would just dry up so he can make nice-nice with the Islamic terrorists he won't call out by that name?

Congress, now led by Republicans, is not interested in giving Obama carte blanche to sign treaties with Iran, especially those that are spineless and have no expected productive outcome other than to give Obama something to point to in his last State of the Union address in 2016.  So they are quickly debating a law that would force the president to gain congressional approval for any such treaty with Iran.

Naturally, Obama would veto such a bill, but Congress can override the veto with enough Democratic votes.  And when you start looking at senators like Chuck Schumer of New York and other Jewish Democrats in Congress who are big Israel supporters with big Israel-supporting constituencies, you can pretty quickly get close to a number that makes the White House squirm.

What a game.  Obama, who has spent a lot of capital issuing Executive Orders to try to steal the legislative rod from Congress, now squeals when Congress responds by practicing a little foreign policy itself.  The White House, having fudged the lines of separation of powers, now is put in the unfortunate position of having to complain when Congress does the same thing.

And it is Netanyahu, a pain in the White House's collective glutei.  That only adds a little glee to those who are applauding the Speaker's invitation as a fitting response to Obama's six years of disrespect to the leading ally of the USA in the Middle East, and an excellent answer to his disrespect to the separation of powers explicit in the Constitution.

Well played, Speaker Boehner, sir.  Well played.

Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton