President Donald Trump pulled another thread on the tapestry of President Obama's rapidly unwinding legacy today by announcing an end to the Iran Nuclear Deal. Whether we're talking the Paris Accords or the Iran Deal, President Obama took the easy and politically expedient route of bypassing the Senate and negotiating an Executive Agreement - a legally meaningless agreement if not backed up in some way by law. When you do such things, YOU put the credibility of the US at risk.Even when what you did is undone by a petty vulgarian - because you made it possible for the petty vulgarian to undo you.
"...non-treaties lack the imprimatur and broad-based acceptance that treaties, by design, tend to enjoy. If the president wanted his arrangement to be more permanent, he should have gone to the Senate. And if he didn’t go precisely because he knew the Senate would say no, then he knew all along he was building on sand. Whose fault is that, pray? His successor’s?"
And before you start hand-wringing and protesting that the mean old Senate just wouldn't work with Obama... let me stop you with a "too damn bad" response owing to our Constitutional order. After losing the House in 2011 Obama set about doing whatever he could via executive orders, memos, and agreements. In so doing, he set the stage for the chaos of the undoing of his legacy. In short, Obama gifted his successor with an easy path of reversal - even if that successor was an incompetent dolt. Whether or not Obama's policies were "good ideas" is really pointless sentiment. Process matters. And in a system governed by rules and not by men the only measure of a "good policy" is whether or not the proper process was followed. Obama sowed the seeds of his own legacy's undoing. He made it easy for Trump.
