Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio, speaking to Politico about the congressional tradition of evading accountability in general, and specifically on Syria: "Most members of Congress of both parties would prefer to sit it out. If the president does well, they can say, 'Gee we were there with him.' If the president doesn’t do well, they can say, 'We were against it.'"
Makes you proud, doesn't it? Representative democracy? Voices of The People and all that? They, and only they, with the constitutional authority to declare war--quivering and hiding under their taxpayer-provided desks?
At least in the run-up to our last "just war"--the second big and global one--congressional battle lines were well formed. There were plainspoken interventionists and unashamed isolationists and the ambivalence between was as thin as the opinionated shouting was deafening. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled it being the "most savage political debate in my lifetime," outsavaging even Vietnam.
Today? Literally today? Half of it will be consumed by incumbents' fundraising calls, the other half consulting with smooth-talking media experts who school others in the art of rhetorical evasion and political unaccountability.
And these are the boys and girls who are about to guide us through the Fiscal War of '13. Holy freakin' shit.