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SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson join Hari Sreenivasan to discuss 2015’s most pressing foreign and domestic policy issues and the political legacy former New York Governor Mario Cuomo leaves behind.
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: I wait and hope that we will have a debate on this subject (wars).
I mean, the Congress, both parties, has not forced the issue. I mean, this should be national policy. What it has been in the sense is a delegation to the President. You can delegate authority, but you can’t delegate responsibility. And the responsibility under the Constitution is with the Congress. It’s with the people. We should have a national debate exactly on what we are willing to do.
We have had ouchless, painless wars, with tax cuts, for the past 15 years, and coffin after coffin has come back, and congressman after congressman and President after President has not gone to the funerals. And Gold Star mothers are not comforted, except by letters and an occasional phone call.
And this is not a broadly shared sacrifice. It’s a violation of the great American principle of the universality of shared sacrifice. And that has been totally missing. And we do need a debate on this. And it’s been — it’s been dereliction of duty on the part of our leadership and on us, as a people, in not demanding it.
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