Move it along, no hostilities to see here...

Unbeknownst to many Americans, there's a conflict raging in the House that has absolutely nothing to do with revealing boxer shorts and Twitter this week. President Obama's team defended military action in Libya on Wednesday in response to a House resolution condemning the action last month and Dennis Kucinich's current legal quibble with the continued use of military resources ostensibly to remove Muammar Qadafi from power. The statement from the White House is significant because it establishes a threshold at which armed conflict reaches the "hostilities" level. The War Powers Act, passed in 1973, states:

"It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicate by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations."

In suggesting that the current military engagement in Libya by American forces doesn't constitute "hostilities" as defined in the resolution, the White House wrests control of the debate and exercises a further prerogative in determining foreign policy that runs contrary to both the language of the resolution and, subsequently, the Constitution.

Let's go back to third grade (because, in all honesty, Washington more often resembles the playground than the epicenter of United States' foreign and domestic policy). You're lunch money has been stolen over and over again by the same bully, and you've had enough. You plan to meet under the slides right after the bell rings. You've entered a schoolyard fight, and pursuant to the rules of the playground both sides know what they're in for. If caught, detention will have to be served. Now imagine the you simply throw rocks at the bully from across the playground, and, when the assistant principal inevitably steps in to break up the fight, only he goes to detention. Throwing rocks doesn't constitute actual engagement in a "fight," instead you were simply antagonizing the bully and are therefore no longer susceptible to the laws of the playground.

That may be a crude analogy (okay, it is a crude analogy. I don't think Qadafi's greatest crime was hanging his opponents by their jock straps from his flag pole). The fact remains, however, that Obama is attempting to both rewrite the laws and definitions of the United States unilaterally for further Commanders-in-Chief to exercise. As the Times correctly points out, the judicial branch will likely steer clear of this justiciable conflict based upon political technicalities, leaving the controversy to be settled through political means. Should the ability of the executive to wage war without the consent of the people be left to determination through political channels? Sure, the conflict in Libya (in conjunction with other uprisings throughout the Muslim world) currently carries with it the apparent will of the majority. The White House conceded that the military and diplomatic goals (to protect the innocent, to depose Qaddafi) of the United States are different. If Obama wins this constitutional showdown, however, the next time a conflict (NOT "hostilities"!) comes along, regardless of its morally-defined bounds, the future president will have Obama's precedent to legitimately exercise his authority. And the American public will be the ones waiting in line for that swirlie.

A Goober Does Sociology

This morning, I happened across a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times written by Sheryl Gray Stolberg that attempts to explain why political sex scandals occur almost exclusively to male office-holders. The simplest answers--that men outnumber women in Congress by a margin of greater than 4:1 and that positions of political, economic and social power long-held by men may increase a need for a "quick-fix" self-esteem boost enabled by meaningless intimacy--are addressed in Stolberg's piece but ultimately cast aside in favor of a type of moralistic argument that illustrates, in conjunction with several recent high-profile scandals running wild in the media, the necessity of a public myth that our pop culture heroes still possess the possibility of being motivated completely by altruistic means.

Stolberg quotes Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, who states, "The shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody." To selectively quote Walsh here may do a disservice to the research conducted by the Center. Certainly, in reality, there are men and women present in the current Congress who have to defy this simple dichotomous explanation of the motivations of the sexes in politics. Yet, Walsh's statement illustrates vividly the optimistic American belief that our politicians can be altruistic servants of the common good, as originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers. In those days, the Presidency wasn't a position one aspired toward, it was a grave responsibility that was assumed as a kind of selfless public service. Washington didn't step down in 1796 to go on an extended tour of lucrative speaking engagements, and in some ways the statement made by Walsh and the outcry against Jonathan Edwards' current campaign finance scandal (leaving the despicable nature of his personal infidelity out of the equation) indicate a revulsion to the current career-minded politician and a nostalgic desire to return to the days when servitude and integrity were placed before advancement.

A few weeks ago, I posted a review of David Foster Wallace's long essay "Up, Simba" to this blog in which the author grappled with this very issue much more adeptly than I could hope to. Arguably, the sex scandals of the past few weeks have only intensified Wallace's observations about the salesman mystique of the modern American politician, and Walsh's piece published this morning throws a gender-specific slant on the kind of nostalgic hope present in the American public that politics can still be self-less and not ironically self-aware.

It occurred to me, as I was reading Walsh's article, that politics are not the only arena in which we (both the public and those in positions of fame) cling to perhaps outmoded archetypes. The current scandal at Ohio State, already covered on this blog and to the point of nausea in the sports media, contains all the elements of similar scandals occurring in the political arena. Jim Tressel cultivated a public personality of selflessness and virtue, while accepting a salary bloated to levels of Solomon-like excess and turning a blind eye to the ethical violations of his athletes. The current year-long backlash against LeBron James (of which, I admit, I am a passionate participant) is fueled by some kind of ancient code of honor that honestly should never have lasted past the free agency era in any sport. Collectively, as a society, we are aware of these virtuous archetypes and use them as helpful narratives to keep us from becoming, as this past week's episode of South Park so poignantly reminded us, "cynical assholes."

We need these symbols of unquestioned virtue in all aspects of our culture, whether true or false, to keep us from believing that our society is in an apparent moral and spiritual decline. And, certainly, there are instances in which the narratives prove true. At the same time, we should not allow a comforting story to obscure the truth about ourselves and what the world around us has become because we are afraid to admit the consequences brought about by social media, frenzied election cycles, or the unrelenting pursuit of wealth in a global capitalist economy.