Going to Congress: Obama's Best Syria Decision : The New Yorker

This may be the first sensible step that Obama has taken in the Syrian crisis, and may prove to be one of the better ones of his Presidency—even if he loses the vote, as could happen. Politically, he may have just saved his second term from being consumed by Benghazi-like recriminations and spared himself Congressional mendacity about what they all might have done. It will likely divide the G.O.P. Although he said that he didn’t really, truly need to ask Congress for permission, he is doing so. Presidents—including Obama, in his decision to ignore the War Powers Act in Libya despite its clear application—have abandoned even the pretense that they need to seek Congressional approval. (Representative Peter King has already complained that the President is “abdicating”—a verb that tells you a lot about why this was a good decision.)
If he loses it’s not unambiguously clear, given how ill-thought out the military strategy appears to be at this point, that Syria, or even his Presidency, will be worse off. (See George Packer’s post on the possible costs, and wonder for a minute if getting the Gulf of Tonkin resolution through was such a victory for Johnson.) “Our democracy is stronger when the President and the people’s representatives stand together,” Obama said; he might have added that it can also be stronger when they stand apart, as long as they are standing up, voting, and being counted. As for his goal of reasserting the importance of international norms, laws, and processes—he would only have undermined that by heading off alone, and can at least live by it by losing.
Would a loss in Congress mean that there is impunity for the use of chemical weapons? That is what Obama will argue: “Here’s my question for every member of Congress and every member of the global community: What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price?” That case will only be stronger if it is argued in front of a legislature and the public, and not in a closed room in the White House. And a loss, as devastating as it might feel, might do less to undermine the possibility of a future consensus than a reckless strike that could have gone very, very wrong, and left too many people regretting having cared. A no vote could also shake other countries out of the view that international treaties and bodies are for show, while the real decisions happen in Washington, and lead to a strengthening of them.
Or it might go badly. Obama is certainly taking a risk, but that’s what the Presidency should be, and this one is worth it. The worst outcomes would involve either Congress or the President dodging this moment and its meaning. Congress might do so by constructing some legislative monstrosity, as it did during the debt-ceiling crisis, that relies on a complicated series of mechanisms that assure nothing—except that whatever happens is Obama’s fault—or too-sweeping powers. And the most disastrous thing that Obama could do is not admitting that he’s lost if he does, and bombing anyway. Perhaps it’s too optimistic to say that today’s decision might be what keeps some future President, our country, and who knows what other nation and people from the sort of tragedy that destroys cities. But it will certainly help, in an area where the world needs all the help it can get. And that makes this a morally important moment for the President as well.
via Going to Congress: Obama’s Best Syria Decision : The New Yorker.