When "Yes" Means "No"

A U.S. senator or a representative wishing to support President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran will vote “no” when the legislation comes before the Congress.

Similarly, a lawmaker opposed will vote “yes.”

That is why Obama probably will have a chance to veto the bill that passes, even though passage means a majority of those in Congress oppose the presidential agreement joined in by other countries and already approved by the United Nations.

In effect, a vote for S. 615 is a vote to reject the agreement. Its title is the “Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015.” The key is “review.” By its nature, a review bill in Congress is a proposal of rejection. That was confirmed by a person answering the phone in the office of Sen. Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, who introduced the bill.

A non-expert reading the Senate bill would be hard pressed to figure out the reverse English on the congressional cue ball. It reads just like the agreement is fine with our government’s legislative branch. In actuality it sets forth actions the president and his departments must take to make sure that Iran is fulfilling an agreement’s terms, terms which the Congress demands, such as strict verification.

Reading a summary of the senate bill prepared by a nonpartisan congressional research service supplies no additional clarification for the meaning of opposing votes.

Remember criticism of members of Congress who did not read the thousands of pages in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? There were summaries and there were staff members paid to find out what was in Obamacare.

Fact is bills and resolutions can be difficult to read, especially without some legal training. Even a one-line bill striking out the section number of an existing law can be far reaching with intended and unintended consequences.

Some senators opposed to the Iran agreement bill but supportive of the president are reported to be in favor of protecting the congressional prerogatives. It will be difficult to know that merely from their no votes.

Good citizenship can be burdensome.

DEBATE OR CATTLE CALL

Something better than a cattle call of presidential candidates is needed for future “debates.”

Fox News did try to round up smaller numbers of would-be nominees by dividing the 17 hopefuls into groups of seven with low polling numbers and the ten with higher numbers. Still too many for such a format of moderators asking questions.

Many of the questions were designed to entrap the hopefuls into explaining spoken words or statements later construed by press and opponents as less than precise or even pernicious. Good entertainment, but not very helpful to voters who will need to decide how to use their franchise in primary and general elections. Real issues are complex and viewpoints or proposed solutions cannot be put forth properly in a minute.

In the two hours given to the questioning of the upper tier, some questions were missing, although the candidates managed to get in a few references. Government debt, taxation, regulation, foreign relations.

Then there was the grade school exercise that opened the prime-time session. Ten adults having resumes of accomplishment in government or the private sector (versus the celebrity of cablecasting) were asked to raise hands if they might try a third party or independent run for president if denied the Republican Party nomination. Besides the undignified nature of the request, it was designed to smoke out but a single suspect candidate, which worked. That candidate could have been asked directly as such a threat applied only to him, as did such questions asked others based on their own words or actions.

Questions and other talk by the moderators consumed nearly 32 percent of the allotted time in the prime-time session. They used 31 minutes, 53 seconds according to a University of Minnesota researcher whose data was reported on the Web. The candidate -- the target of the hand raising, as it happened -- with the most time speaking did so for 10 minutes 32 seconds. Next used 8:32, and the tenth got 5:10.

A record 24 million people watched, the most ever for a non-sports, cable news show.  No one knows how many of those viewers will watch future debates or who used the first show to make up their minds. And, of course, how their reactions might affect the final outcome in November 2016 is not worth considering. Nonetheless, such a large number can have some consequences, such as retention of the format, one which is not that informative.