“Herding Cats.” That’s what former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., called his 2005 political biography.
The former Senate majority leader knew what he was talking about in trying to get all of his party members on the same page. Today, with Republicans in control of the Senate for the first time in eight years, the challenge is no different. The members refuse to be herded.
The latest episode came Monday when Tennessee Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander were two of the seven GOP members who refused to go along with the pack. In this case, they were right in going their own way,
Indeed, they were being the adults in the room.
Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, earlier had submitted legislation that would provide for 60 days of congressional review for any deal that comes out of the discussions about nuclear weapons between Iran and the U.S. and five other Western powers. And it is his hope to get veto-proof, bipartisan support for such a bill.
Nothing would speak louder to the Obama administration on the merits — or lack thereof — of a deal many believe would not stop but only delay the Middle East nation from building nuclear weapons.
But, out of the blue, 47 of the 54 Republican senators on Monday wrote in an open letter to “leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran” that, without congressional approval, any deal agreed to by the administration could be revoked by the next president or see its terms modified at any time by future congresses.
The 47 senators may be wary, and they’d be right to be, of the negotiations by the Obama administration. The president, who once told voters he could sit down with officials from Iran and work out a nuclear deal, now says in so many words that the deal in the works is the best we can get.
The deal, which doesn’t have all t’s crossed and i’s dotted, would basically pare back Iran’s nuclear program for 10 years in exchange for loosening of the international sanctions placed on the country. At the end of 10 years, Iran, which says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful energy and medical research purposes — and which no one believes, would be able to resume its nuclear development.
The problems, of course, are many. The first is that the deal being hammered out is not a treaty and, thus, does not require congressional approval (i.e., a two-thirds majority of senators for consent for ratification).
In going around Congress, which Obama is wont to do, the president learned from another Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who believed his Treaty of Versailles ending World War I nearly a century ago would be a slam-dunk in the Republican Senate. It wasn’t, and his stroke following his work on the treaty closely preceded the treaty’s non-consent and effectively ended his presidency more than a year and a half before its official conclusion.
Further, Iran has spent the last six years building its nuclear program with no oversight or inspections. So the agreement is not freezing a program in its infancy. And if oversight and inspections are put in place, there is no guarantee the country would allow them or wouldn’t hide the technology it is developing. Finally, 10 years is a short time. Once 10 years pass, the U.S. and Western powers would have nothing to show for their agreement.
The framework of the agreement in question is supposed to be concluded by the end of this month and a final deal by June 30, so Corker’s legislation seeking congressional oversight is a critical step.
The letter drafted by freshman Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., though, is an unneeded piece of interference, even if the 47 senators — perhaps emboldened by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s warnings of a “bad deal” before Congress last week — are wary of the nuclear negotiations and/or don’t believe the Tennessee senator’s bill will pass Congress or be signed by Obama.
“We’ve got a bipartisan effort that’s underway that has a chance of being successful,” Corker told The New York Times, “and while I understand all kinds of people want to weigh in,” he concluded it would not “be helpful in that effort for me to be involved in it.”
Alexander did not sign the letter out of support for his fellow Tennessean’s bill. However, both of Georgia’s senators, Johnny Isakson and David Perdue, and both of Alabama’s senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions, did.
The letter itself is likely to make little or no difference in the negotiations because the White House and the Iranians are already aware that increasingly Americans are wary of the deal. But the 47 Republicans would be better speaking through Corker’s congressional review legislation than through a letter with no standing.