Therefore none of the “historic” public support Presidents had reflexively received in times of conflict and crisis is relevant today. I have to say that Baker’s column makes me angry, even as accustomed as I am to the Times’ perfidy. How dare the Times write about this phenomenon as if it is an objective observer rather than an active accomplice in making President Trump’s use of his Constitutional powers as difficult as possible?
The Times was a cheerleader for Barack Obama’s craven attempt to bribe Iran into temporary peacefulness, when anyone paying attention knew that the regime was untrustworthy and would use Obama’s pallets of cash to spread terrorism and build the weapons to wipe out Israel and make its “Death to America!” motto a reality. And they did.
In the meantime, the nation’s “newspaper of record” worked tirelessly to make certain its readers held nothing but contempt for the current President of the United States. The public support for our Presidents in times of crisis must be based on trust. The New York Times has done everything in its power, including lying during a fake Democratic smear that he colluded with Russia to steal an election, supporting two partisan impeachment efforts and approving the unconscionable efforts by two New York attorneys general to use the courts to take him out of the 2024 Presidential race, to ensure that the public would not trust this President.
In short, the Times itself is significantly responsible for the fact that Trump lacks the traditional support Presidents have received—and need—to deal with international threats, and it has the gall to tut-tut his taking military action without that support.
And guess who the first historian the Times and Baker run to in an appeal to authority! Why, Michael Beschloss, the “Presidential historian” who has morphed into MSNOW’s and CNN’s go-to partisan hack to bash Trump and Republican and bolster Democrats at every turn. Here’s his dossier, and its disgraceful. Historian Doris Kearns is also partisan (after all, she was LBJ’s part-time mistress when she was writing about him at his ranch) but at least she might have reminded the Times that our two greatest Presidents, Washington and Lincoln, pursued wars that the public didn’t want (Washington wasn’t President during the Revolution, but it was his war as much as anyone’s) and her #3, another President Kearns admires, FDR, was secretly fighting WWII against overwhelming public disapproval before Pearl Harbor.
For good measure, the Times added an “expert” whom it also knew in advance would undermine Trump: Peter D. Feaver, a national security aide under President George W. Bush. The entire Bush Family orbit, which includes such bitter NeverTrumpers as Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol and Richard Painter, will never forgive Trump for dissing George and Jeb. Baker ignores that conflict of interests just as he pretends Beschloss and the Times itself don’t have a partisan agenda.
That President Trump took this opportunity to attack Iran after every President since Carter had “kicked the can”—the Iran Can!—down the road without reading the polls is to his great credit, while the Times uses it to imply weakness and looming failure.
Of course it does. It is the “enemy of the people.”
Ethics Alarms 
“Don’t do the right thing if it isn’t popular”
Trump recently said, “I don’t care about polls.” Bravo.
In case anyone asks, I support the military action against Iran. It is necessary and must be carried out to the bitter end.. Death to all who support the theocracy. Unconditional surrender must mean more than just laying down arms and signing a “loyalty oath”. The IDF must be left with every key to every door in Iran so they can deal with all the apparatus that could be used to build weaponsThe cost be damned….. lathes, mills, centrifuges … everything.
The cost be damned. The price of letting Iran go unchecked is way higher.
You may want to follow the following YouTube channel. It explains in detail the weaknesses of Iran’s ballistic missile program, and how the USA systematically destroys Iran’s ability to launch missiles.
I agree with those who support finally ending a 47 year old protracted war. It is high time we stopped allowing third world theocrats try to kill our people – and theirs – to achieve global religious domination.
Public support is a function of understanding the potential costs of being passive to cowardly bullies. Tell people time and again it is an illegal war and the ignorant will believe them. Polls too often ask leading questions that push people to answer a desired way. Moreover opinions are like brains everyone has one but that does not mean they are competent to render an opinion
Ugh. I intended to make the (one would think) obvious point that public opinion about war situations shouldn’t matter at all, since the public, as you say, only know what they hear from the news media and that’s not enough to make crucial policy decisions. When we are attacked, as in the cases of Pearl Harbor and 9/11. then the news tells them everything they think they have to know. I got pulled away from that point when my head exploded after the writer stooped to using Beschloss, that jerk.
“… public opinion about war situations shouldn’t matter at all …”
The operative word here is “shouldn’t”. But in a republic with a democratically chosen government and a free press we allow public opinion to matter. The USA lost the Vietnam war at the home front after Walter Cronkite called the war a “quagmire” even though the Tet offensive was a military failure for the NVA. Any war the USA fights carries the risk of losing votes in Congress, or losing elections followed by a next administration or Congress reversing the war efforts of the previous one.
The left and the media are using the same playbook to cause the U.S. to lose this Iran war they used to cause the U.S. to lose the Vietnam war. They might as well be the official Iranian news agency. All they report are successful Iranian drone strikes which are of absolutely no tactical, never mind strategic consequence.
And this is why the conventional wisdom about a President’s second term always being a flop has been turned on its head by Trump. The historian’s analysis was always that a lame duck President had diminished power. Trump is proving that being a lame duck is liberating.
Yes and this is also why I am disappointed Trump has not taken the opportunity to make a major speech detailing all the reasons this war is necessary.
Getting widespread support is worth a lot of effort. Ask Abe.
If someone asked me (….still waiting … 😉) the actual core of this issue is that those Founders did not envision an American Empire such as exists today. A world-level military that is a million times more consequential to a republic as the feared “standing armies”.
So it happens that the only moral democratic voice is the box populi. And it is folly to believe that military industrial interests will think and plan morally.
The Iran escapade has obvious features and benefits (if successful) but 1,000 hidden aspects that may not well be reconciled with original republican values.
The northern US power-center was transformed toward imperium as a result of the conquest and occupation of the South and that nefarious character as “nation builder” appeared then. It developed further with the Spanish American War and USA became the hegemonic power in the Caribbean. Talk about Americans lacking education! How easy you are unaware of the real facts of your real history. (And I have not even mentioned the invention of the modern corporate “person” which couldn’t ever have been morally visualized by the Founders).
You cannot simply give all these powers over to your or ANY government and tell people they must only passively observe and STFU!
Just think when the US legal immortal corporation-person melds with AI entity and personhood.
Another point. You don’t need leaders to take you where you want to go you need them to take you where you need to go.