Obama's Foreign Policy and the Imperial Presidency
Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, has an interesting op-ed today in which he notes that President Obama’s foreign policy is similar to that of President Bush’s but is subject to less of an institutional check, see here. Douthat reasons that, because Republicans tend to agree with Obama’s aggressive and militaristic foreign policy, they do not push back against it in the way that many Democrats pushed back against President Bush’s foreign policy, and that mainstream Democrats tend not to
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Ross Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times, has an interesting op-ed today in which he notes that President Obama’s foreign policy is similar to that of President Bush’s but is subject to less of an institutional check, see here. Douthat reasons that, because Republicans tend to agree with Obama’s aggressive and militaristic foreign policy, they do not push back against it in the way that many Democrats pushed back against President Bush’s foreign policy, and that mainstream Democrats tend not to push back out of some combination of party loyalty and substantive agreement. This means, suggests Douthat, that Obama has even more political room to operate unilaterally in foreign policy than did Bush. Presumably, the killing of Bin Laden will only heighten this phenomenon.
Curtis Bradley is the Allen M. Singer Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. His courses include Foreign Relations Law and Federal Courts. He joined the Chicago faculty in 2021, after having taught for many years at Duke Law School. He has served as Counselor on International Law in the Legal Adviser’s Office of the U.S. State Department and as a Reporter for the Restatement of Foreign Relations.
