He asks, from the Congress he disdains, an authorization he considers superfluous.
By George Will
Because Syria’s convulsion has become as serious as Barack Obama has been careless in speaking about it, he is suddenly and uncharacteristically insisting that Congress participate in governance. Without even a precipitating event, such as Syria’s alleged poison gas attack, he waged 
protracted war against Libya with bombers and cruise missiles, but without Congress. Regarding institutional derangements, he is the infection against which he pretends to be an immunization.
In the Illinois Legislature, he voted “present” 129 times to avoid difficulties. Now he stoops from his executive grandeur to tutor Congress on accountability.
In Washington, where he condescends as a swan slumming among starlings, he insists that, given the urgency of everything he desires, he “can’t wait” for Congress to vote on his programs or to confirm persons he nominates to implement them.
In foreign policy, too, he luxuriates in acting, as most modern presidents have improvidently done, without the tiresome persuasion required to earn congressional ratifications.
Now, concerning Syria, he lectures Congress, seeking an accomplice while talking about accountability. Perhaps he deserves Congress’ complicity – if he can convince it that he can achieve a success he can define. If success is a “shot 
across the bow” of Syria’s regime, he cannot fail: By avoiding the bow, such a shot merely warns of subsequent actions.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has advertised his skepticism about intervening in Syria. His very public intrusion in a policy debate may exceed what is proper for the uniformed military, but he seems to have played Obama as dexterously as Duke Ellington played a piano.
Dempsey assured Obama that the military mission could be accomplished a month from now. (Because the bow will still be there to be shot across?) This enabled Obama to say that using the military to affirm an international norm (about poison gas), although urgent enough to involve Congress, is not so urgent that Congress’ recess required abbreviation.
Britain’s Parliament inadvertently revived the constitutional standing of the U.S. Congress when Prime Minister David Cameron’s incompetent management of the vote resulted in Parliament refusing to authorize an attack. His fumble was a function of Obama’s pressuring him for haste.
If Parliament had authorized an attack – seven switched votes would have sufficed – Obama probably would already have attacked, without any thought about Congress’ prerogatives.
Obama’s sanctimony about his moral superiority, to a Congress he considers insignificant, has matched his hypocrisy regarding his diametrically opposed senatorial and presidential understandings of the proper modalities regarding uses of 
military force.
Now he asks, from the Congress he disdains, an authorization he considers superfluous.
By asking, however reluctantly, he begins the urgent task of lancing the boil of executive presumption. And surely he understands the perils of being denied an authorization he has sought, then treating the denial as irrelevant.
George F. Will is a columnist for The Washington Post & Newsweek.
