Inoculation Time
Bush should demand broad warmaking authority.

By John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru
September 13, 2001 12:30 p.m.

here's a lot of talk in Washington right now about unity — and particularly about setting aside partisan squabbles. But plenty of divisions lie just beneath the surface of this bland rhetoric.

Congress is thick in discussion over granting war-powers authority to President Bush through legislation. Some Democrats worry about giving too much to Bush — they're warning against what they call "a blank check." Of their many possible motives, one seems clear: They're laying the foundation for future criticism of how the Bush administration responds to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. At some point such criticism won't seem as blatantly unpatriotic as it would right now.

How much discretion Congress grants the president is a matter of negotiation — it can be moved in degrees one way or the other. Yet Bush should not give away anything: He should demand the blank check, or something very close to it, and dare Democrats to say no. Even members of the House Anti-American Caucus will have a hard time voting against what Bush requests.

This may hardly seem like a time for politics. Yet politics grinds on. There's no avoiding it in a democracy. Plenty of behind-the-scenes bartering went into the composition of the resolution Congress already has passed condemning the attacks. There will be more at stake when the subject is presidential war authority. Now is a time for this Republican administration to invest the Democrats as deeply as possible in that authority, not only for its own good, but for the good of the whole country.

Oh Canada!
Canadian journalist Gordon Sinclair's pro-American commentary from 1973 is making the rounds on the Internet, often without attribution or any background information. The complete text of his editorial, plus the context for it, may be read here.