Founders Refused to Vest War Powers in One Man for Good Reason | The American Spectator

One of the errors of the Iranian system pertains to concentrated power. The discontent shown in the streets in late 2025 and early 2026 owes directly to this unresponsive, unaccountable dictatorial system that predates the ayatollah-ocracy established 47 years ago this month.

The Ayatollah Khomeini, to the strange shock of so many Western leftists who had supported him, banned music on the airwaves, alcohol, usury, popular newspapers, uncovered female heads, co-ed beaches, opposition parties, and, presumably, co-ed beach parties (and co-ed beach parties attended by moneylenders), too. (RELATED: Ten Thoughts on Operation Epic Fury and Its Aftermath)

Freedom requires not merely that governments largely refrain from interfering with individual choice but also that governments do not recognize the whim of one person as law. The founders of the American Republic understood this better than the founders of the Islamic Republic.

This helps explain why they did not vest war-making in a single person. The modern penchant of presidents to bomb first and ask permission later violates that fundamental principle. It cuts out the people who represent us from controlling whether or not we launch a war in which some of us inevitably kill and die.

This amounts to the most serious matter for a government to decide. Only very frivolous people would leave it up to one man.

The founders were not frivolous.

Supreme Leaders are (were?) for Iran, not the United States.

“The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts. demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it,” James Madison wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1798. “It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl: But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and will deposit the peace of the Country in that Department which the Constitution distrusts as most ready without cause to renounce it.”

Rep. Thomas Massie does not know as much about the Constitution as the man often credited as the father of it. But he knew enough earlier this week to rely on James Madison to make the case for the necessity of a war declaration vote for President Donald Trump’s Iranian campaign.

Whether justice and our national interests dictate war with Iran serves as fodder for another, more subjective debate. The Constitutional necessity of winning the imprimatur of the representatives of the people and states seems both a settled matter and one almost completely disregarded. Put another way, we know the correct course but choose the wrong one anyhow.

This was not always so.

James K. Polk submitted to the Constitution despite wishing to vigorously pursue the Mexican-American War.

“I invoke the prompt action of Congress to recognize the existence of the war,” he petitioned Congress in 1846, “and to place at the disposition of the Executive the means of prosecuting the war with vigor, and thus hastening the restoration of peace.”

William McKinley spoke to Congress of “the traditional policy of our Government” resting upon “precepts laid down by the founders of the Republic and religiously observed by succeeding Administrations to the present day” to obtain their approval for war against Spain.

“With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty,” Woodrow Wilson prefaced his ask for a declaration of war in 1917.

Even Wilson, who nationalized the railroads and jailed Eugene Debs, knew he needed to at least pay deference to the Constitution on such a serious matter. These wartime presidents spoke of “the precepts laid down by the founders” and “unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty” when referencing the role of Congress as articulated in Article 1, Section of the Constitution.

The 11th, 25th, and 28th presidents did not pretend to know the Constitution better than the fourth president. Why do so many of their more recent successors believe that they do?

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