Jason Fritz Says~~ .....even inviting or meeting with a foreign dignitary can be considered conducting foreign relations or negotiating. Our Constitution empowers the president, and the president only, to conduct foreign relations on behalf of the United States government. He cant be everywhere at once, so a State Department was created to carry out that role under the authority of the president. But members of Congress, no matter how high-ranking, cannot participate in foreign relations any more than they can issue orders to even a single member of the United States armed forces--its part of our checks and balances, or at least its supposed to be. The reason this is a big deal is because we cant have foreign governments cooperating with some parts of our government to gain an advantage over other parts. During the 1980 presidential election cycle, for example, its believed that the hostage takers at the U.S. embassy in Iran were in communication with the Reagan campaign and agreed to perpetuate the hostage crisis until after the election in order to secure concessions from a Reagan Administration that they couldnt get from the Carter Administration. Its easy to see how allowing more than one point of contact with our government has the potential to give foreign powers the ability to influence our internal policies. Thats why any and all official communication is supposed to go through the State Department, not Congress.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 06:54:21 +0000
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