End of Iran Deal Underscores a Weakness of Obama's 'Pen and Phone' Presidency

End of Iran Deal Underscores a Weakness of Obama's 'Pen and Phone' Presidency

Yup. "My point in bringing up the relative ease with which Trump pulled America out of the Iran deal isn't (simply) to bash Obama. He's out of office, and Trump and the GOP own the state of the nation. It's to underscore the low-grade, slow-moving constitutional infection that has plagued the 21st century like Hep C. If Congress refuses to do its job, which is to write laws and give clear limits to the executive branch, all we have to look forward to is a series of four- or eight-year lurches in this direction and that as the presidency slides from Republican to Democrat and back again. This is no way to run a corner market, much less a country. But it won't stop until the group Mark Twain identified as America's only native criminal class starts to actually do its job. Final point to the NeverTrumpers: Realize that everything The Donald does simply by pen and phone will be just as easily countermanded as Obama's own "signature achievements." If a president's signature ain't on a piece of actual legislation, it might as well be written in pencil."