FLASHBACK: Obama’s Breathtaking Expansion of a President’s Power To Make War. “Future historians will ask why George W. Bush sought and received express congressional authorization for his wars (against al Qaeda and Iraq) and his successor did not. They will puzzle over how Barack Obama the prudent war-powers constitutionalist transformed into a matchless war-powers unilateralist.”

But that was different, because they thought there would never be a Republican president again.