By Marc A. Scaringi

Media reports about House Speaker John Boehner inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress have centered on the break of diplomatic protocol and how it underscores the deep rift between Republicans and the president.

Marc A. Scaringi (PennLive file)

Following Netanyahu's speech, pundits talked of how Netanyahu's sharp criticism of President Barack Obama's negotiations with Iran makes it harder for Obama to get Congressional approval for any agreement.

All of this underscores why our Founding Fathers entrusted the president - not Congress - to conduct diplomatic relations. What we've seen this week isn't just bad politics - it was a violation of the Constitution.

Article II Section 3 of the Constitution empowers the president to "...receive ambassadors and other public ministers." Furthermore, under Article II Section 1, "The executive power shall be vested in a president of the United States of America."

The power to receive ambassadors and public ministers and the executive power granted to the president means the president and only the president communicates foreign policy and conducts diplomacy between and among nations.

In keeping with the checks and balances that run through the Constitution, the Founding Fathers did include situations where power over foreign affairs is transferred in whole or in part to the Congress. For example, the president has the power to make treaties but the Senate must ratify them. The president has the power to conduct war, but Congress must first declare it.

But the Constitution clearly makes the president the chief diplomat and sole spokesman for the United States on the world stage.

This understanding extends back to George Washington, who made it clear when a French minister, Edmond Genet, attempted to contact Congress directly to gain support for America's help in his country's war with Britain. Washington's position was that of strict neutrality.

Washington was so incensed that he had his secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, write a letter to Genet censuring him for his conduct. Secretary Jefferson wrote to Genet that "no foreign agent can be allowed ... to interpose between him [the president] and any other branch of government." Later Washington became so annoyed by Genet's continued efforts to communicate with Congress that he had Genet recalled.

When former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin came to America and blasted President Ronald Reagan's negotiations with Saudi Arabia concerning the sale of AWACS planes, Reagan was furious. Reagan shot back, "It is not the business of other nations to make American foreign policy."

Later Reagan wrote in his autobiography, "I didn't like having representatives of a foreign country - any foreign country - trying to interfere in what I regarded as our domestic political process and the setting of our foreign policy."

The U.S. Supreme Court clearly established this presidential power in a 1936 case involving a company indicted for selling military equipment to Bolivia. The company had ignored a joint resolution by Congress and proclamation by President Franklin D. Roosevelt forbidding such transactions.

In its ruling, the high court stated, "In this vast external realm, with its important, complicated, delicate and manifold problems, the president alone has the power to speak or listen as a representative of the nation.

He makes treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate; but he alone negotiates. Into the field of negotiation the Senate cannot intrude; and Congress itself is powerless to invade it."

Having one voice in U.S. diplomacy is critical to the functioning of our government. The Founding Fathers understood this as have our greatest statesmen from George Washington to Ronald Reagan.

Congress cannot and should not give foreign ministers the forum of a joint session of Congress with the intent and goal of interfering in an ongoing negotiation between the president and foreign ministers.

As our country deals with dangers around the world and seeks to reassure allies, America needs to speak with one voice - and our Constitution clearly states the president is that voice.

Marc A. Scaringi is an attorney in the Harrisburg-based firm Scaringi & Scaringi, P.C. and a former candidate for the Republican nomination to the U.S. Senate.