The president called out Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey in front of the entire Democratic Caucus yesterday, and Menendez didn’t like it.
Their face-off occurred behind closed doors at the Hilton in Baltimore, where the two-day Senate Democratic Issues Conference was taking place. The president spoke to the senators for nearly two hours, and several people said he was well received by members of his party as he vowed to remain on the political offensive during the final two years of his presidency.
His exchange with Mr. Menendez occurred near the end of a question-and-answer session after Senator Angus King of Maine — an independent who caucuses with the Democrats — asked for an update to the [Iranian] nuclear talks.
According to one of the senators and another person who was present, the president urged lawmakers to stop pursuing sanctions, saying such a move would undermine his authority and could derail the talks. Mr. Obama also said that such a provocative action could lead international observers to blame the Americans, rather than the Iranians, if the talks collapsed before the June 30 deadline.
The president said he understood the pressures that senators face from donors and others, but he urged the lawmakers to take the long view rather than make a move for short-term political gain, according to the senator. Mr. Menendez, who was seated at a table in front of the podium, stood up and said he took “personal offense.”
Yes, Senator Menendez took personal offense that the president would suggest that he was taking a short-term view because of the pressure he was feeling from donors or that he was putting his own personal political gain in front of the administration’s strategy and the best interests of the country. He was offended that the president would point out that pursuing increased sanctions at this time could lead to a collapse of the talks for which the United States rather than Iran would be correctly blamed. So, Senator Menendez huffed and he puffed and said a number of self-serving, self-important and impertinent things. But none of those things changed the reality.
Senator Menendez is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and he’s not on board with the opening to Cuba and he’s not on board with the administration and the State Department on Iran.
What good is he?
