Did the letter undermine the president? It could have. It was stupid and ill-advised. But is anyone on the Left actually advocating for the senators' imprisonment and execution? Let me rephrase. Is anyone rational on the Left advocating for this? No.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good dose of outrage.
Lest we forget, the Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes provides some examples when the Democrats have undermined Republican presidents with foreign leaders:
* In 1979, Senator Robert Byrd traveled to the Soviet Union during the SALT II arms talks to “personally explain the requirements of our Constitution” to Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev. Byrd later wrote: “In Leningrad, I explained that I had come to the Soviet Union neither to praise nor condemn the treaty but to create a better understanding of the treaty in the Senate and to explain to the Soviets the Senate’s constitutional role in treatymaking.”
* In the early 1980s, Senator Ted Kennedy secretly approached leaders of the Soviet Union with a proposal: I’ll help you with Ronald Reagan’s defense build up if you help me defeat him in the 1984 presidential election. Former senator John Tunney conveyed the offer on Kennedy’s behalf.
* In April 1985, as the Reagan administration sought to limit Soviet influence in Central America, Senator John Kerry traveled to Nicaragua, met with Communist strongman Daniel Ortega, and accused the Reagan administration of supporting “terrorism” against the government there. “Senator Harkin and I are going to Nicaragua as Vietnam-era veterans who are alarmed that the Reagan administration is repeating the mistakes we made in Vietnam.” Kerry’s trip followed a letter from a group of House Democrats led by majority leader Jim Wright to Nicaraguan strongman Daniel Ortega. The “Dear Comandante” letter declared: “We regret the fact that better relations do not exist between the United States and your country. We have been, and remain, opposed to U.S. support for military action directed against the people or government of Nicaragua. We want to commend you and your government for taking steps to open up the political process in your country.”
* In 1990, former President Jimmy Carter secretly wrote to the leaders of the U.N. Security Council nations urging them to oppose a resolution offered by his own country. The existence of the letter was revealed when one of its recipients shared a copy with the White House. Presi-dent George H. W. Bush was “furious” at the “deliberate attempt to undermine” his foreign policy, according to his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft.
* In 2002, in the heat of the congressional debate over the authorization of the Iraq war, the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, David Bonior, traveled to Baghdad with two fellow Democrats to oppose the imminent invasion. Democratic congressman Jim McDermott appeared on ABC’s This Week from Baghdad to denounce President George W. Bush and propagandize for Saddam Hussein. Shakir al Khafaji, a well-known fixer for the Iraqi regime and a longtime supporter of Bonior, arranged the visit. The Democrats vigorously denied that they had accepted Iraqi regime funding for the trip. Documents uncovered in postwar Iraq demonstrated that their claim was untrue.
* In 2007, newly elected House speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Syria to meet with Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. At the time of the trip, the Bush administration was seeking to isolate Assad, whose regime was supporting insurgents in Iraq who were targeting U.S. troops. Pelosi disregarded the administration’s request to cancel her trip. Instead, she appeared in Damascus and reassured the world that Assad was eager to be a constructive player in the region and wanted peace with Israel.
Back in the real world, in the political cycle, this stuff doesn't matter. Why? Cuz we got #47Traitors trending, man! Woohoo. Champagne for everyone at MSNBC and Media Matters. Just another way to use the ignorance and short-term memory of the electorate against them. If this is our threshold for calling "treason," then all of our leaders have been traitors for a long time. And hey, Republicans did it to Bill Clinton too. As the Washington Post puts it:
The folly here is not in Cotton’s decision to write the mullahs, but in Obama’s petulant response that Cotton and his colleagues were “making common cause with the hard-liners in Iran.” Please. The deal Obama is negotiating is opposed not only by Republicans in Congress, but also by leading Democrats, the government of Israel and most Arab leaders. Are they all “making common cause with the hard-liners in Iran” too?
Rather than having a temper tantrum, Obama should emulate Clinton and use congressional and international opposition as leverage at the negotiating table to get a better deal with Iran. And rather than rail against those who are speaking out against his deal, Obama should ask himself why so many are going to such great lengths to stop it. The problem is not their criticism, but Obama running roughshod over the concerns of Congress and U.S. allies. The fact is that any deal Obama reaches that does not have broad bipartisan backing in Congress and the support of governments in the region is in fact “dead on arrival” — even if Cotton and company are too polite to put it that bluntly.
And to be fair, if any of the 47 called "treason" on one or more of those actions before this letter, they shouldn't be surprised. Soemthing something "chickens home to roost" something.
In other news:
- Hillary Clinton's press conference on her secret email server was a disaster. It's the same old Clinton, where obfuscation and technicalities should satiate everyone. Does anyone really want her to be President, or is it just a matter of Democrats resigned to the fact she'll win the nomination, and she's better than any Republican? Is that what it is? Even the White House doesn't know how to defend her on this.
- Gov. Martin O'Malley took a baby step forward in perhaps declaring his own run for the Presidency, willing to go on the record with a gentle disagreement on how Hillary's handled the email controversy.
