"Under our Constitution, war is not a first-person affair"

Writing at The Washington Examiner, the Cato Institute's Gene Healy notes that while President Barack Obama didn't mention the Constitution once in his big speech on the Libyan war last night, the president did employ the first-person singular again and again, from "I refused to let that happen" to "I authorized military action" to "I refused to wait." Yet as Healy explains:

It's not just that this hits the ear as self-referential and presumptuous--it's that this particular construction shows that other constitutional bodies have no role to play in the president's world view.

Under our Constitution, war is not a first-person affair.

Read the whole post here. Read Healy on the cult of the presidency here.