Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist 73, explains the reasons for giving the President the power to veto bills passed by Congress. Writing in the spring of 1788 in support of the proposed Constitution, he offered two distinct justifications for its inclusion: first it protects the authority of the presidency, and second it promotes better laws and discourages bad ones. With Congress and the President at loggerheads over the future of the Iraq War among several things, what Hamilton had to say at the Founding was prescient for our day.

In Federalist 73, Hamilton first addresses the need of the President to be able to protect his office from intrusions by the legislature into those powers given to him under the Constitution. He notes that the legislative branch is the most powerful and could literally make the President (and the Judiciary for that matter) its slave. It could pass laws down to the minutest of details of how the President was to undertake his duties. The Executive, Hamilton writes “might gradually be stripped of his authorities by successive resolutions, or annihilated in a single vote.” One could even suppose that details like when he starts his work day or how often he will meet with the Speaker of the House or Leader of the Senate in order for them to inform him what he is to do next or what world leaders to meet with could be mandated by legislative decree. Hamilton explains (borrowing words from James Madison’s Federalist 48) that “mere parchment delineation of the boundaries of each branch” will not be enough to keep the legislature from subsuming all the important aspects of being President.

The nation was able to witness first hand last week how “mere parchment boundaries” are not enough when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on a self-appointed, high profile diplomatic mission to the Middle East. The Constitution vests the President with the authority as Head of State responsible for conducting foreign affairs. None-the-less, over the objections of the President, Pelosi went to the region and even tried to broker talks between Israel and Syria. In so doing, she ran roughshod over years of diplomatic efforts by the Bush Administration in dealing with Syria-a state sponsor of terrorism. In addition to presenting a divided front overseas to a nation likely supporting the insurgency in Iraq, Pelosi apparently misrepresented the conditions under which Israel would engage in peace talks with Syria--thus embarrassing herself and the United States in the process.

While the President can do little to prevent the Speaker or any member of Congress from intruding into the Executive department in this fashion, one tool the President has at his disposal to maintain what Hamilton calls its “vigor,” vis-à-vis the legislature is the veto. A veto requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate to be overridden. As noted above, this power protects not only his authority but also promotes better laws and discourages bad ones. The Iraq War supplement bill offers a perfect case study in how it does both.

First in protecting the President’s authority, the Constitution designates him as the “Commander-in-Chief.” None-the-less the versions of the Iraq War spending bill passed by both the House and the Senate require President Bush to begin pulling troops out of the country and have the war all wrapped up one way or the other by next year. Neither bill makes provision for conditions on the ground or the actions of the enemy or how our troops in the fight might be affected or the effect on the overall war. In President Bush’s judgment, now is not the time to be telling the enemy when the United States intends to leave and begin drawing the number of troops down when conditions within Iraq and throughout the region are not yet stable. His top commander on the ground, General David Petraeus (whom the Senate unanimously confirmed a little over two months ago), feels the same way. Petraeus testified during his confirmation hearings that he intended to conduct counterinsurgency operations throughout Iraq, which would include increasing the number of troops in Baghdad. He, therefore, would need additional forces to implement this strategy.

The Senate and the House bills run contrary to Petraeus’ plan. The Senate bill specifically calls for the withdrawal of American troops to begin within 120 days and both bills have timelines. Incongruously, Senators Clinton, Reid and Obama all voted to confirm Petraeus. President Bush said he will veto any such bill. Clinton responded by saying that would be “vetoing the will of the American people.” Reid, Obama and former Senator and now presidential candidate John Edwards have made similar accusations. Reid now threatens to propose a new bill to cut off war funding altogether if the President vetoes the current one. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi instructed the President regarding vetoing their bill to “Calm down with the threats…We respect your constitutional role. We want you to respect ours.”

By vetoing either version, President Bush would actually be fulfilling exactly the role envisioned at the Founding by not only protecting his authority but also promoting better laws and discouraging bad ones. Hamilton writes that “the legislature will not be infallible; that the love of power may sometimes betray it…; that a spirit of faction [a zealous sub-group within the legislature] may sometimes pervert its deliberations; that impressions of the moment may sometimes hurry it into measures which itself, on maturer reflection [it] would condemn.” He adds, “[t]he oftener the measure is brought under examination, the greater the diversity in the situations of those who examine it, the less will be those errors which flow from want of deliberation, or those missteps that proceed from the contagion of some common passion or interest.” One thing the Democrats and particularly those who have announced their candidacy for the presidency all have in common is they want to take back the White House. Unfortunately this gives them something of a vested interest in seeing President Bush fail in Iraq. Though 70% of Americans supported the President’s handling of the war following the fall of Saddam in 2003, those numbers have now switched to only 30% approving. This is a stick the Democrats used in 2006 and want to use again next year. The “love of power” and the “spirit of faction” at this moment are skewing their deliberations. Having to overcome a veto provides what Hamilton calls a “salutary check upon the legislative body, calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body.”

The truth is that Congress has not reached a consensus that setting a date certain for pull out or even a goal is in the best long term interest of the United States. Though holding a 233 to 202 Democratic majority in the House, Pelosi’s bill only passed by the slim margin of 218 to 212. It took several special add on projects to the bill unrelated to the war to even reach that number. The margin in the Senate, with similar sweeteners, was even slimmer at 50-48.

President Bush by vetoing the current Iraq War supplement bills will protect his role as Commander-in-Chief and force the Congress to pass a law with a greater consensus based not on political expediency, but on what’s in the best long term interest of the United States.