Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi created quite a stir this week when she defied the White House and embarked on a self-instigated diplomatic mission to Syria. Her trip was quite eventful. In two short days, the Speaker not only managed to undermine White House efforts to isolate a country that is known to be a state sponsor of terrorism, but she also managed to make unauthorized promises on behalf of Israel. How ironic that her defiant assertion of independence resulted in a symbolic act of submission on Syrian soil: She donned a headscarf during part of her visit in the Muslim-dominated country.

Wow. Sure makes every American woman proud of the first female Speaker of the House, doesn’t it?

Some congressmen would like to believe that their role in foreign affairs is greater than the Constitution provides. Unfortunately, Pelosi is not the first to snub her nose at the law, making a grab for power that is not constitutionally delegated to her. As early as 1796, many House members similarly tried to usurp power in foreign relations. But the nation’s first President, George Washington, recognized the danger of allowing the House to seize powers delegated to the President and the Senate. He acted decisively to rebuke the House before matters got out of hand.

One of the major foreign policy issues of Washington’s day was relations with Great Britain. The two countries had signed a peace treaty at the end of the Revolutionary War, yet problems remained. Washington sent a special envoy, John Jay, to Britain for treaty negotiations, but the treaty negotiated by Jay was a disappointment to most Americans. Although opposition to “Jay’s Treaty” was intense, Washington felt that it was America’s best hope of avoiding the renewal of hostilities. He submitted the treaty to the Senate, which narrowly approved it. According to the Constitution, then, the treaty had obtained the two actions that it needed to be valid: The consent of the Senate and presidential ratification

The House of Representatives, however, was not satisfied. The issue was hotly debated on the House floor, and congressmen demanded that Washington send them papers related to the negotiation of Jay’s Treaty. Washington refused, citing the Constitution. “[T]he assent of the House of Representatives is not necessary to the validity of a treaty,” he wrote the House, “and as it is essential to the due administration of the Government that the boundaries fixed by the Constitution between the different departments should be preserved, a just regard to the Constitution and to the duty of my office, under all the circumstances of this case, forbids a compliance with your request.&rdquo

Washington recognized a fact that the current Speaker of the House chooses to ignore: The constitutional division of power among the Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary protects Americans. These boundaries must be respected, always, even if one individual does not see their use in a particular set of circumstances Washington would later explain in his Farewell Address to the nation:

“If in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.”

President Bush should heed Washington’s wise words. Pelosi’s encroachment on executive authority should not be allowed to stand, unchallenged

The Speaker of the House of Representatives does not have authority to speak on behalf of the United States when traveling abroad, particularly when the President has asked her not to do so. The Constitution delegates this power to one person—the President—for an important reason: The United States is best served when it speaks with one voice abroad. Indeed, the need for a unified voice in foreign relations was one important incentive that prompted the founding generation to draft a Constitution in the first place. Americans had suffered in the 1780s when thirteen colonies, with thirteen different voices, had presented a fractured front to the world beyond American borders.

Can Bush stop Pelosi from violating the Constitution so egregiously? Maybe. His administration should investigate the claim that Pelosi violated the Logan Act—a felony—when she traveled to Syria, as described by Robert Turner in his recent Wall Street Journal editorial.

If Bush will not protect the Constitution, as Washington did in 1796, then voters must speak with their pocketbooks and their votes. They must find a way to do the job for him.

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