Biden Was For The Senate's Constitutional Power Before He Was Against It

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Weekly Standard:

According to Miles's Law, "where you stand depends on where you sit." And so when Vice President Joe Biden hyperventilates over Republican senators' criticism of the Obama administration's negotiations with Iran, we must take him with a grain of salt. He used to have a seat in the Senate; now he stands behind President Obama.

 

Nevertheless, when the ex-senator and former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman condemns his successors for daring simply to point out that any substantive agreement with Iran will not become a binding treaty without Senate consent, it is hard not to chuckle. For when presidents were Republican and Senates were Democrat, Senator Biden sang a significantly different tune.

 

Writing in 1989 on the "constitutional partnership" between presidents and senators, then-Senator Biden invoked "the wisdom of the Founding Fathers" for a much less restrained Senate under the Constitution's treaty power.

 

"Among the Framers," Biden argued, "it was Alexander Hamilton who, though renowned as the leading advocate of a strong presidency, stressed that it would have been 'utterly unsafe and improper' to entrust the power of making treaties to the president alone." (Emphasis added.)

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Memory Interruptus.