Budget deficit, 38 , education, 31 . Immigration was at 14 . The beheadings were enforcing mechanism. Congress planned to be in session only 12 days after the summer legislative recess. The beheadings compressed the calendar in terms what the president can do and what congress wanted to do. What Congress Really wanted to do was pass a shortterm extension of the budget and then get out of town and focus on the elections. I would take a little the difference with rachels point. The congress does not want to take tough votes is not a new concept. Districts are more gerrymandered than before. If you look back at lincolns time, they avoided votes because it was too politically difficult than and it has not changed since. Before we go further, we will have to have a debate about who we are actually fighting. Even an important citizen might be very confused without a scorecard of who are the threats. I would like to bring tim starks in here. You had clapper and the Intelligence Committee briefing lawmakers about what they considered were dangerous threats, pressing threats to the United States. You are right. Its very difficult for the average person to keep track of these groups. Its difficult for the Intelligence Community to keep track of these groups. People might forget that al qaeda in iraq is a forebear of the Islamic State group that has become such a big threat. The Bipartisan Policy Center is going to be releasing a report tomorrow that has a chart of where all these groups are. They say that looking at 2008 compared to now, al qaeda and its affiliates are operating in 16 different countries, which is double what it was in 2008. That includes wildcards of groups that could popup, or if there is a big deepening of a conflict in israelpalestine that some other group might capitalize and become a danger to the United States. The one that was getting a lot of attention this past weekend. That is the one the clapper said was in the vicinity of dangerous. Yet, you also still hear about al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. A good number of experts, the chairs of the committees will say that is one we need to worry about. They have a track record of trying to carry out these attacks on the United States, and inspiring them among homegrown terrorists in a way that other groups dont quite have since 9 11. That is another big one. There are a variety of other groups some of them are weakening, but they can be revived. It goes back to the point about the Islamic State. You pointed out last week that the action against Islamic State may inspire these groups to step forward in an opportunistic way. Talk about that. If you took the u. S. Officials, they worry about the Islamic State to some extent. In terms of nearterm danger, one of the things they worry about more of the groups you are talking about, but also the fact that they may have an incentive they did not have a couple of months ago to man a strike. The Islamic State is sucking all the air out of the extremist world. If youre running al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, you suddenly have a need to prove your relevance, youre still here, you still matter, how do you do that . Maybe you pull the trigger if you can on a big strike against the west. Maybe not necessarily here. You make the point, we are still around too. That is a legitimate concern. It is also a testament to see how much the Islamic State has changed the game in a short period of time. You raise the question of who are we fighting against. Theres also a question of who are we fighting with against the Islamic State, and do people see the threat the same way . This disagreement here as to whether the Islamic State poses the greatest threat or not. That is part of the confusion that has everybody feeling nervous. The one thing that is clear in that polling a new get a sense of just listening to the conversation on the hill in the last couple weeks is that to the extent americans had decided steadily over the last seven years that the threat, the 9 11 threat against them and the homeland, that has receded in the last month. Would be beheadings be a most significant driver in the uptick . Yes. Based on the public all in, you cant see a similar spike. You see it drift up and down, the fear factor, but nothing like what happened in august. You have a spike in fear, you have multipronged threats, a congress that is not debating. Congress has given way to the sitting president on the war action for a generation now. Arent we experiencing a slowmotion constitutional crisis . Yes and no. The yes is in some ways, we are experiencing the same constitutional crisis we have been experiencing since unilateral dishes making decisionmaking. At least for the moment, the president has plausible if not selfevident statutory arguments today. The president has suggested that authority to go after isis for the moment can be derived from the statute congress has, entirely because isis is the successor to al qaedas legacy. It is not implausible. The moment when this becomes a real constitutional crisis is when you have a thread for which there is no plausible statutory authority, threat for which there is no plausible statutory authority. That could easily happen. Im just not sure we are there yet. You are releasing a paper later this week on the varying views on the right, on whether the president should seek new authority. We are releasing a paper on isis and whether or not an isisspecific aumf would be appropriate. The reason that most were actions happened in a specifically designed aumf we break out the five constituent parts of that and say if the congress is not convinced of the president possibly go arguments, the president s legal arguments that isis grew out of the 2004 [indiscernible] even though he is dead, there is this break from the core al qaeda but you cannot make the case, then Congress Needs to the president should be proposing and amuf. It is a must read. When you read both of them together, you really get a good sense of what is happening in the legal academy. He gave a speech at my alma mater on constitution day, and he talked about how the constitution is under stress over the last decade because of the various machinations from the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration. He gave various examples. There is some merit in that argument. I agree with steves point as well. It is worth stressing the very different constitutional question we are grappling with today versus 5, 10 years ago. The question is not what happens when you have a president legally defy an act of congress on the grounds of statutorily unconstitutional. The question is what happens when you have a president who is convinced that some force needs to be used to quell a threat to the United States, where congress apparently agrees, where there seems to be more than the majority in both houses, but where they just cannot get their Heads Together whether for political reasons or logistical reasons or for other reasons unknown to us. That is the constitutional crisis that worries me, which is not when you have congress saying one thing and the president saying something else. It is when you have complete agreement among the political branches that a refusal to do with the constitution requires, which is at some point to pass new legislation. I might take slight disagreement with you on that. There might be instances for action there is still such a Great Division within the Democratic Party and Republican Party that is easier for congress to not do anything. It is easier for them to say, let the president go right now unless something gets out of hand and they dont like what hes doing. This issue of congress willingly ceding authority to the president is interesting. It is in the interest of constitutional dynamic. We had a story today that this would be the most donothing congress of all time, unless they pass 100 bills in the lame duck session. It is interesting how much you see a president go to congress and say, i want something, and till he starts taking about ramifications of congress saying if we dont like it quite a way you do quite the way you do there was a period of time in which the cia wanted to be more open about working with congress. I asked him, what do you think about the authorization bill that is coming up. E very privately use curse words to describe how much he did not care. Something subtle but interesting happened in the last few weeks in regard to the relationship between the executive and the legislative branch. President obama came out and said, it think i have the ability to act here. But i invite you in congress to please authorize something, get with me here, do something. The executive branch some of us have been doing this for a long time and the tendency of the executive branch is to say to the legislative branch, stay as far away from me as humanly possible. Please go away. He did not say that in this case. He said, please authorize something so there is a sense we are moving together here. They did not really. The authorized training and arming the Syrian Rebels with no dollar signs attached. That is a different dynamic between the two branches. With kosovo 1999 congress had [inaudible] the vote was a tie. 216 to 216. We are not talking about a has the house that had resolution before. Biscuits to jerrys earlier point about the interesting polling where the American People were saying, we want you to do this and when the president did this, they did not reward him for it. The American People are looking for a government that can do something successfully abroad. They are worried they are not going to see it. You get this funny back and forth where they say, we want you to do something that we dont really believe youre going to succeed and we dont want to fail again. That is an even bigger problematic dynamic than the constitutional dynamic, this loss of faith in the American Government to act effectively from both parties. Part of the reason that happened, which i give credit to the president for doing because that is a healthy way of signaling to them, lets work together, is because of what happened last year on the serious situation syria situation. It was like two teenagers trying to figure out who is going to ask the first one out on a date. He did not really want to put forward and aumf proposal and congress did not want to reward him by doing one. What would happen if it was an Election Year who knows. It is very clear to me that i saying what he said, hes very open to and aumf. I think they realize there is this vigorous debate in the legal academy, and they are widely open. It was a speech last may, not this most recent may but last may where he said the same thing. Antirepeal the old one. And to repeal the old one. Not long after, defense officials testified to congress, we are good with a aumf as it is. It is certainly a very different situation than last year. Knows the price no surprise there. Can we go back to august of last year . Did obama make a mistake in asking for that vote . Cant do business as usual, very forceful was his speech. It was a pivot point. Almost everything that happened in Administration Foreign policy is to some degree or another judged against the backdrop of what happened that week in august. The white house doesnt like to hear that, but i think that is true here. Its true in terms of relations with congress. It is probably even more true in terms of the way people abroad see the u. S. And see the Obama Administration. What the president has done with the Islamic StateCoalition Building is starting to pull back some of that. It was a big moment, and it did affect lots of things that happened in the year subsequent. Having been involved from afar, there were not the votes. They just did not have the numbers. They did not want to bring it to a vote. They do not have the numbers because the constituent was running against that vote. I dont member the numbers for every single senator remember the numbers for every single senator. It was overwhelming. There wasnt a beheading video at that point. You eventually have to go back to the American People if you are a member of congress. You did say the American People are uncertain there would be a successful that we will have a measure of success. I want to go back to something written about. These ad hoc coalitions can fail. What is the prospect of success with this coalition . Im not privy to the classified documents on this one, and i really hope that it looks better than it does from the outside. From the outside, most militaries are not set up the way our military is, to actually protect the people in the country and the territory of the country. Based on that, we give them money and try to train them, but their fundamental purpose is different than what we want them to do. That is a real problem. Absolutely. Some of these states were dealing with, you would have seen a lot of confidential information about, are you any more confident . This is not a partisan issue. We note need the coalition to win. One thing we have not talked about here is leadership. A president , any president in his sixth year needs to regroup, needs to reassess the people around him or her and needs a clear vision for the next two years. This is one of those classic cases in point where the president needs to leave lead. He needs to lead. Theres a lot of different types of folks voting. That is an opportunity, i think. Put together the right type of winning legal argument, political argument for us to win. The Administration Needs to be more forthright, honest and direct about who this coalition is and what theyre going to do. Its going to be very hard, because there will be things they cant talk about red about. Americans are used to turning on cnn and the next day seeing the crosshairs and bombs going off. We are not seeing that. We are like, what the heck is going on . There is an emotional aspect here that people are not getting what they are hearing. Steve, do you think we need a new Legal Framework on partners . Yes, but we allude to this before with the kind of countries we are talking about in listing in this coalition against isis. When you talk about the assad regime in syria, we talk about iran, how do we feel comfortable that the fact that the enemy of our enemy is suddenly not so much our enemy . If we need a new framework, it would be good if we can exert some leverage and put strings on the aid we are providing and the support we are seeking. We need them at the moment, perhaps as much as they need us. As long as that is going to be true, it will be hard for us to impose conditions. That will create a very bad structure where the kind of support that we need, especially in the middle east, will come from countries who are not going to say, do it and we will improve our human rights record or we will do it unconditionally. We are in a relatively weak position. I think we do need it, but i do not think we are going to get it. When obama backed down, he said he was dispatching john kerry. With our partners in peace. John kerry this morning, he seemed to be describing the Islamic State as a state. That they controlled territory they have, a funding flow. I dont know. Whether the u. S. Government is on the precipice of recognizing it is a dangerous proposition. First of all, is going to pissed off that territory that is claimed by another state. I cant imagine we have recognized the Islamic State. Sovereignty, right to act in selfdefense. I dont know if america has hail in some kind of moved to a recognized statehood or we were focused that this is a group we are going after, not because they are a standard terrorist group, but many groups control wide swaths of territory. Territory changes the game. It gives them more security from action by other countries. I dont know this beginning of anything other than a nomenclature change. People are not being able to see the normal atmosphere and imagery of war. Maybe that was carried trying to create that. The consequences are so dire. To draw an analogy, this is the one bridge linking would not cross. They would never recognize the confederacy as a country grade when you do that you confer legitimacy. Talk about the practical effects that are partners in jordan and turkey. Were seeing a lot of reaction. This is in your wheelhouse. Do we have not a lot of time to make an effect of pushback to ease this crisis . The refugee crisis, we are seeing it now. Suddenly it is real to us. This started years ago with the syrian war. It has been a serious issue in lebanon and turkey, the destabilization of those states is quite real. There are little boys and girls growing up in those camps. What are they seeing on their tvs . Their parents hopeless in the face of something. The more years they are in those camps the more you are going to see a generation growing up with this normality. We know now not just the emotions but the brain, Brain Science is telling us the violence that causes in people. Impulse control. You dont want generations growing up in refugee camps and not being able to work, and seeing that. We are going to see that for this generation. We want to deal with this soon. We have been trying from a humanitarian perspective. We will need it more. What kind of a drain is that on a country like jordan . I have no idea. I am not jordanian. I can only imagine from what i have seen and what i talk to my friends in the military am i have served for 23 years. That is debilitating. If you look at the people in the last week, it makes katrina and the numbers of people fleeing new orleans look like not