WASHINGTON — The United States is teetering on the brink of war with Iraq. Edgy citizens brace for terrorist retaliation. The United Nations is consumed by the looming conflict. The Turkish and British parliaments are riven over U.S. war plans.
But back in "the world's greatest deliberative body," the U.S. Senate spent most of last week mired in a partisan brawl over a single federal judge. The House, meanwhile, squabbled over a tax bill laden with special-interest goodies and passed a resolution mourning the death of Mister Rogers.
The disconnect between Congress' parochial preoccupations and the sense of historic peril abroad is a striking reminder that U.S. lawmakers have put themselves squarely on the sidelines of impending war against Iraq.
In voting last fall to give President Bush unchecked power to decide whether and when to launch an assault on Iraq, Congress essentially delegated its constitutional power to declare war. That's not unprecedented, but analysts say Congress's role in the Iraq debate has been more deferential to the president than in past conflicts such as the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
"The Senate's role has become cheerleading," said Joel Silbey, a political historian at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Its members "seem to succumb to presidential predominance in a very supine way."
That pains no one more than the Senate's senior Democrat, Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. He is the self-appointed guardian of the Senate's constitutional prerogatives and traditions -- the chamber that is supposed to have the largest role in foreign policy and that has been the scene of many great debates about issues of war and peace.
"We stand passively mute ... paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events," Byrd said in a recent Senate speech. "We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.' "
Byrd's speech spread like wildfire around the world through newspapers and the Internet.
Stung by such criticism, Senate leaders set aside three hours Friday morning for senators to give speeches on Iraq.
Democratic leaders -- and the party's presidential hopefuls -- have begun to step up their criticism of Bush's prewar diplomacy in the face of crumbling support at the United Nations.
But war critics say the speeches and the rhetoric are too little too late, coming months after Congress gave Bush the go-ahead for military action.
"Clearly senators would prefer to talk about the war rather than do anything," said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, an arms-control advocate.
Even observers less partisan than Byrd, who was on the losing end of the 77-23 vote authorizing war, agree that the Senate's role in the Iraq debate is a pale shadow of past periods of more robust leadership.
Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar who started work as a Senate staff member in 1969, said he arrived when the chamber was ringing with debate about the war in Vietnam -- and had a sense of pride about its role in foreign policy.
"There was still a sense of the grandeur of the body and the importance of the body," Ornstein said. "To look at it today, the Senate is struggling to find an appropriate role to play. I think you'd be hard-pressed to suggest the Senate is a great debating body -- on anything."
Supporters of Bush's Iraq policy are unapologetic about Congress' focus on matters close to home as the nation edges toward war.
"We shouldn't have a moratorium on domestic issues," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
And Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) said the absence of sustained debate on Iraq reflects the fact that most lawmakers still support Bush's policy.
"Sen. Byrd has strong feelings, but I don't think that's close to a majority of senators' view," Lugar said.
While the president traditionally dominates U.S. foreign policy, it is Congress that has the constitutional power to declare war. However, the last time Congress approved a formal declaration of war was for World War II. Ever since -- in Korea and Vietnam, as well as lesser military actions -- presidents have deployed troops without a formal declaration.
The White House has usually sought some form of congressional endorsement, such as the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution that escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the 1991 resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq after it invaded Kuwait.
When Congress last October debated the Iraq resolution, it showed less willingness to challenge the president than when it approved, by a much narrower margin, the 1991 resolution. In the recent vote, war critics say too many senators swallowed their reservations about attacking Iraq and supported the resolution because they feared the political consequences of opposing a popular president shortly before the November midterm elections.
