OPINION: Trump has Ohio voters where he wants them...distracted

And so it has. The United States has been continuously at war, someplace, somehow, continuously since Dec.7, 1941, when the grandfather of today’s Japanese emperor agreed to a sneak attack on the Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, naval base.

Then, as the U.S. Constitution provides, the Congress of the United States duly declared war on Japan, a war the United States won after sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of young Americans..

In January, leaving aside Washington gobbledygook, President Trump launched a war against the government of Venezuela, ostensibly because it was a bestial regime. Complete coincidence: Forbes magazine reports that Venezuela has massive oil resources, “approximately 17% of the global total, even more than Saudi Arabia.” Congressional reaction to Trump’s coup in Caracas: Crickets.

Then, most recently, President Trump on his own (presumed) authority, set the entire Near East afire by accomplishing the assassination of Iran’s murderous leader and lancing that 93-million-resident pustule of terror to the benefit of America’s one steadfast ally in the region, Israel.

Congressional reaction to Trump’s decapitation of Iran’s leadership clique: More crickets. And you can expect that to remain the case unless and until the bodies of young, uniformed Americans start arriving at U.S. military mortuaries.

Congress has the exclusive power to declare war on other countries. Let’s duck into the history hutch to see the last time was that happened: June 4, 1942, almost 84 years ago, when Congress declared war on three Balkan allies of Germany – Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania.

That’s it. Korea. Vietnam (including Cambodia, Laos and Thailand); Ronald Reagan’s Grenada show; Bill Clinton’s bid to pacify the Balkans; George H.W. Bush’s kidnaping of Panama’s then dictator: None of these drew more than harrumphs from people who – in theory – are supposed check and balance adventurism by presidents.

Congress has become nothing more than a vending machine for after-the-fact “react-folo” quotes about presidential warmaking.

But speculators in war (“defense”) stocks are sitting pretty, as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday: “Defense stocks rallied ... after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran,” specifically citing Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

That builds “back-home” support for weapons spending when someone asks a local member of Congress why arms are a congressional priority, not, say, better health care. (“Among peer countries, the U.S. has the lowest life expectancy at birth for both women and men,” according to the Peterson Center for Health Care.)

Ohio is being treated to a U.S. Senate campaign, with appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted, of Upper Arlington, originally of Kettering, challenged by former Sen Sherod Brown, of Bexley.

Gov. Mike DeWine, of Cedarville, appointed Husted to the Senate when then-Sen. JD Vance, a Cincinnati Republican, became Trump’s vice president. Ohio’s other U.S. senator is Bernie Moreno, a Westlake Republican born in Colombia, who has evidently never heard Donald Trump say anything Moreno disagrees with. Trump’s usurpations of the war-making power of the United States don’t much concern these Ohio Republicans, though time was it would have.

When the key question at Ohio’s breakfast tables is, “How ‘bout them Buckeyes?” rather than, “Who are we bombing today?” you know Donald Trump has voters exactly where he wants them: Distracted.

And thanks in part to their congressional delegation, Ohioans are. Today, the first Bob Taft would be dismissed as an irrelevancy – rather than as the prophet he has proven to be.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him attsuddes@gmail.com.