Sen. Tom Cotton, Tragic Hero

The snarky quip attributed to 19th-century French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand -- "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder" -- has recently been making the rounds to deride a letter written by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and signed by 46 other senators.

They wrote to the Iranian theocracy that any agreement on nuclear proliferation negotiated with President Obama will not constitutionally bind the next administration -- unless it is properly ratified by Congress.

Democrats were outraged. They charged that Cotton's letter is a crime, a violation of the 216-year-old Logan Act. That law bars unauthorized individuals from conducting negotiations with foreign governments.

Even some Republicans sighed that the letter was a political blunder. It supposedly plays into President Obama's caricature of right-wing and obstructionist conservatives.

In fact, the letter was not a crime or a blunder.

Senators and House members have a long history of freelancing in foreign policy. Sometimes they do it wisely, sometimes stupidly.

Republican senators went to great lengths to undermine Woodrow Wilson's utopian idea of a League of Nations. Gen. Douglas MacArthur and House Minority Leader Joe Martin did their best to sabotage what they thought was the reckless policy of then-President Harry Truman concerning Korea and Formosa.

Democrats in Congress have been just as eager to warp administration foreign policy in claiming their co-equal part in government.

Secretary of State John Kerry is the most outraged of Cotton's critics -- and has the most notorious record of trying to undermine presidential foreign policy.

As a freshman senator, Kerry traveled to Nicaragua to show solidarity with "Comandante" Daniel Ortega -- as a way of opposing then-President Reagan's efforts to help the Contras in their resistance to the Sandinista communist takeover. Two other Democrats, Sen. Tom Harkin and House Speaker Jim Wright, also met with Ortega.

Most unfortunate was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's disastrous 2007 trip to Syria to meet with thuggish President Bashar al-Assad. At the time of their meeting, Assad was offering assistance to radical Islamic groups that were attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.

Cotton and the senators, in contrast, never traveled to hostile territory, never met with America's enemies, and never wrote warm personal letters to thugs.

http://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2015/03/26/sen-tom-cotton-tragic-hero-n1976120