Chuck Schumer’s Disingenuous Iran Deal Argument

The good senator from New York may be voting his conscience, but he’s got the facts all wrong. 

Jeffrey Lewis, Foreign Policy

What can be said of the role that the U.S. Congress has tried to establish for itself when it comes to foreign policy? At the risk of out-Dicking former Vice President Cheney himself on the subject of executive authority, Congress is a “branch of government” in precisely the same way that college basketball fans are a “sixth man.” We don’t let fans call plays, other than as some kind of preseason stunt. I am not particularly interested in congressional views about the Iran deal.

Could the debate in Congress be less dignified if the members removed their shirts, painted themselves red or blue, and started screaming like the Cameron Crazies?

Which brings us to Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Schumer is one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate, which is not quite the same thing as saying he’s dignified. Back in the 1990s, when he was a congressman, his House colleagues had a phrase for waking up to find he’d upstaged them in the media: to be “Schumed.” Washingtonians have long joked that the most dangerous place in town is between New York’s senior senator and a microphone. The Washington Post’s Emily Heil has suggested we retire that hackneyed cliché, replacing it instead with this bon mot from former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine:

“Sharing a media market with Chuck Schumer is like sharing a banana with a monkey,” Corzine was quoted as saying in New York magazine. “Take a little bite of it and he will throw his own feces at you.”

(More here.)