NEW YORK TIMES: … The militants of the Islamic State were pouring across the Syrian border into Iraq, and seizing cities where so much American blood and treasure had been spilled. But [Senator Tim Kaine] said he told the president in no uncertain terms that if he intended to go to war, he would have to ask Congress’s permission. President Obama politely but firmly disagreed…
Mr. Kaine of Virginia is an unlikely leader in the fight between Congress and the White House over a declaration of war. Genial and junior, the former Virginia governor was on Mr. Obama’s short list for the vice presidency in 2008. He became Mr. Obama’s handpicked Democratic Party chairman, then his handpicked senatorial candidate after Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat, announced his retirement in 2011…of Virginia is an unlikely leader in the fight between Congress and the White House over a declaration of war. Genial and junior, the former Virginia governor was on Mr. Obama’s short list for the vice presidency in 2008. He became Mr. Obama’s handpicked Democratic Party chairman, then his handpicked senatorial candidate after Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat, announced his retirement in 2011…
Even before he was considering a run for the Senate, Mr. Kaine — then Virginia’s governor — was consulting with the leaders of the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs on legislation to replace the War Powers Act of 1973, which some consider toothless. The center’s National War Powers Commission, led by the former secretaries of state James A. Baker III and Warren Christopher and staffed by a who’s who of bipartisan national security veterans, produced its recommendations on re-energizing executive and legislative cooperation on war in 2007, then briefed President-elect Obama in Chicago in 2008 at his request..” … (more)
