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President Barack Obama, joined by Congressional leaders, speaks to the media in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 3, 2013, prior to a meeting with members of Congress to discuss the situation in Syria. From left are, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, the president, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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There is no greater and politically significant power of the presidency than the use of military force, no matter how “unbelievably small” it is supposed to be. The summoning of a nation to military action on behalf of national security interests, no matter how diffuse, regional, or nuanced they might be, is the supreme act of presidential power, persuasion, and projection.
A commander in chief speaks intimately to America, constitutionally to Congress, and authoritatively to the world when he deploys the bullet, bayonet, B-52, or Tomahawk missile. Presidents don’t dopinpricks, either. Every military maneuver—real or feigned, decisive or disastrous—echoes like a drum. The vibrations change the rhythm of domestic politics.
These truths transcend the Obama presidency. They are resonant enough in the aftermath of Syria, where new and unflattering stock is being taken of President Obama and his application of this vast and consequential power.
But Obama also elevated the choice of the next Federal Reserve Board chairman to a place of exalted power, describing it in a White House news conference as the “most important economic decision of his second term.”
This was after Obama had devoted weeks to retooling his economic message, when he downplayed deficit reduction and emphasized job creation and wage growth. The president concluded and signaled to Senate Democrats that he could only surmount the GOP hurdles of sequester, shutdown, and debt ceiling if he changed the debate from belt-tightening to middle-class security.
Taken together, Syria and Summers therefore represent—by history’s decree in the case of military power, and by Obama’s own grandiose vision of the Fed’s role in the economy—the most important second-term presentations of power.
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