POWER PLAYS

In the days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror,” and political scientist William Howell—now an associate professor at the Harris School—began to think about presidential authority and congressional control before foreign conflicts. “The President was running rough-shod over the Constitution,” he says. “It was an extraordinary display of power—as if, when it’s war, the President gets whatever he wants.”

In previous research, Howell found that most scholarship on the American presidency looked at how Congress influences presidential decisions, including war preparations, by passing or defeating funding bills. That kind of action is easy to monitor, he says, but what is missing is an investigation of what “Presidents don’t do because they fear Congress.”

In his new book, While Dangers Gather: Congressional Checks on Presidential War Powers(co-authored with Jon Pevehouse and scheduled for release in 2007), Howell shows that despite the power of the president, Congress does have an impact, albeit subtle, on his decision to go to war. “Inter-branch struggles do not typically resemble duels wherein the President and Congress mark 10 strides and fire, leaving the victor standing and the vanquished bleeding in the dirt. In politics, both often end up wounded, just as both can claim a measure of success.”

“Congress can do lots of things to make life difficult for the President without direct opposition,” Howell says.

“They can signal reservations to the international community which makes our allies less likely to support a war effort. They can also go public with the opposition. The media takes foreign policy cues from Congress and uses this information to shape public opinion. Public opinion then shapes the President’s positions.”

Howell is quick to point out that, although he and Pevehouse have a fresh perspective, they are certainly not the first to consider the issue. In fact, Howell found that nearly 75 years earlier his own great-grandfather, Charles P. Howland, in a similar study “drew roughly the same conclusions: congressional checks are real, presidents have cause to heed them, but they are sporadically enforced.”

Howell’s next project will focus on congressional checks on presidential power once a military action has begun. “The terms of debate shift the moment troops are put in harm’s way,” he says. “On one hand, as reports come back from the field, members of Congress can criticize the president more effectively. On the other, members who opposed the deployment may experience strong pressures to support a military venture that is up and running. As John Kerry learned in 2004, it is difficult to justify a vote against aid to troops already in the field, no matter how misguided or poorly planned their mission may be.”

Barbara Ray