Trump's War Powers Build on Obama's, and Bush's, and ...

In the debate over whether U.S. President Donald Trump needed congressional authorization to bomb Syria after last week’s chemical weapons attack, one important reality is being obscured: The expansion of the imperial presidency is nonpartisan. Trump’s minimalist rationale for the cruise-missile strike marks a stronger version of the claim to executive power than any other president has invoked. But that claim is building on substantial extensions of unilateral power made by Bill Clinton in bombing Kosovo and Barack Obama in bombing Libya.

Whether we like it or not, every president in the modern era has added on to the presidential power seized by his predecessors. And the opposition to such exercise of power must be similarly nonpartisan if it’s going to be credible at all.