opposition to the Iran deal has been especially irrational.
Here’s a simple fact: No treaty between ‘enemies’ has ever been or ever will be entirely satisfactory to either party. That diplomatic truth should be taken as Gospel. And if we can’t accept that – if we can’t accept the fact that the finished product will be flawed – then we (along with China, Russia, Germany, France, the UK and the EU) had no business sitting down at the table in the first place.
As for Obama’s intended veto, Republican leaders and Israeli spokesmen are already pissing and moaning about it, depicting it as the reckless act of a dictator, as if a presidential veto were a slap in the face of democracy and a renunciation of the will of the people.
In truth, a look at presidential vetoes is revealing.
The president with the most regular and pocket vetoes in history was FDR, with a whopping 635. Of course, because FDR was elected four times, he had more bills to contend with. The most vetoes recorded by any president during one term of office was 414, issued by Grover Cleveland in his first term.
Eisenhower had 181 combined vetoes, Ford had 66, and Reagan had 78. Nine of Reagan’s 78 vetoes were overridden, including one involving sanctions against South African apartheid, which, in a stunning move, was overridden by his own Republican-controlled Congress.
George H W Bush had 44 vetoes, Clinton had 37, and George W Bush had only 12 (4 of which – one-third of them – were overridden). The largest percentage of veto overrides belonged to the hapless Franklin Pierce, with 56-percent (5 of 9).
George Washington issued only 2 vetoes, James Monroe issued only one. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson each had zero. So far, Barack Obama has issued a total of four (basically, a day’s work for Grover Cleveland).
This article was originally published as: ‘The unbearable lightness of treaties’.
Courtesy: Counterpunch.org