When it comes to military adventurism abroad, it is well established that President Bush does not respect the controls that this nation's founders imposed upon presidential war-making.

What is not yet well established is the position of Bush's likely Democratic challenger, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, with regard to those controls.

The subject came up Thursday night, when Kerry debated his Democratic opponents in a debate in Los Angeles. What Kerry had to say was troubling.

After explaining that "no, I do not regret my vote" for the resolution that authorized Bush to use force in Iraq, Kerry said, "Let me make it very clear: We did not give the president any authority that the president of the United States didn't have.

"Did we ratify what he was doing? Yes. But Clinton went to Haiti without the Congress. Clinton went to Kosovo without the Congress. And the fact is, the president was determined to go, evidently. But we changed the dynamics by getting him to agree to go to the United Nations and to make a set of promises to the nation."

Apart from the question of whether Congress actually "changed the dynamics" of Bush's march toward war, Kerry again appeared to embrace the view that presidents can go to war without congressional approval. The comments Thursday night echoed statements Kerry made in a Feb. 15 debate in Milwaukee.

Amazingly, no one - not even Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Dennis Kucinich or the Rev. Al Sharpton, let alone the media questioners - challenged Kerry to explain his views regarding the advice and consent that the Constitution says Congress is required to provide before presidents start wars.

During the 1990s, a number of members of Congress, most notably Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., challenged the Clinton administration's decisions to intervene in the Balkans and other parts of the world without clear congressional approval.

"There seems to be an informal understanding that, despite the fact that the Constitution says the Congress must declare wars, and despite the fact that the War Powers Act is good law, the Congress is simply going to ignore its duties," Feingold complained at the time. "There has been a willing surrender of congressional authority to an aggrandizing White House. It suits both their purposes. The administration does not want to endure tough questioning about what it is doing around the world, and the Congress does not seem to want to take responsibility for deciding whether the country should be engaged in wars all over the planet."

Kerry stood with Clinton and against those who sought to assert the role of Congress in decisions about going to war. It should come as little surprise that now, as he seeks the presidency, Kerry remains enthusiastic about extending the power of the executive.

But shouldn't he at least have been asked to explain whether he thinks Feingold and others are wrong to assert the right and responsibility of Congress to provide advice and consent before the United States goes to war? It is notable that, in 1970, when Kerry first ran for Congress, he told a reporter, "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations." That sounded suitably anti-war, but Massachusetts anti-war activists wisely decided that year to back a candidate with a deeper understanding of the Constitution and the role of Congress: Father Robert Drinan, the dean of the Boston College Law School. Drinan won the seat and, citing Section 1, Article 8 of the Constitution, he promptly wrote a resolution to impeach President Richard Nixon for his illegal bombing of Cambodia. The impeachment resolution won the support of 12 members of the House Judiciary Committee.

Boston attorney John Bonifaz, who in 2003 filed suit on behalf of a group of soldiers and members of Congress challenging the Bush administration's authority to go to war, says that, in the aftermath of the Iraq war debate, it is important for this year's Democratic National Convention to adopt a platform plank that affirms the party's support for constitutional controls on war-making.

"The policy of the party should be to oppose further erosion of the war powers clause of the Constitution," says Bonifaz, the author of "Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush" (Nation Books). "The party should say, 'Never again should a president be allowed to go to war as George Bush did.' "

On the basis of what John Kerry had to say Thursday night, it would be interesting to see whether he would support or oppose such a plank.

Copyright 2003 The Capital Times

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